Possible Side Effects
by wanderamaranth
Summary: Jabberwocky blood is powerful but should be used with caution. Possible side effects may occur.
1. Receiving the Vial

**Possible Side Effects**

****a fanfiction by wanderamaranth

**Summary:** Jabberwocky blood is powerful but should be taken with caution. Possible side effects may occur.

**Rating:** T/PG-13

**Warnings:** violence, suggestions of drug use, mild language, some sexual elements including brief scenes of sexual discomfort/unwanted sexual advances

**Disclaimer:** Story contains elements from the original work by Lewis Carroll, every movie adaptation (with an emphasis on the 2010 film 'Alice in Wonderland' directed by Tim Burton), the Wii video game adaption of the same aforementioned film, and the novelization of that very same movie written by TT Sutherland. It also contains numerous references to other works not falling under the umbrella of Alice in Wonderland. Although all these things may be used and abused in the story, this is a work of fanfiction; no profit is being made by the promotion, distribution or publication of this work, and I nor anyone I am affiliated profits from this work.

**Author's Note:** _If this story seems familiar there is a good reason! This is a re-publishing of a story I originally placed on FF between March 12, 2010 and October 20, 2010. I took it down for a number of reasons (which had nothing to do with my readers or reviews, because all were so exceptionally kind I could hardly believe it). Some fresh shiny editing later to rid the story of some glaring grammar errors and some sentence restructuring for clarity and the story is back. Thank you again to everyone who reviewed and favorited the first time around. I promise it's not going anywhere this time. :) If you're interested in obtaining a copy of the original version just mention so in a review or drop me a PM and I'll send you one.  
_

* * *

She was always meant to go galumphing back. The Hatter knew this. After all, he'd recited the poem to Alice-it's not like he was completely oblivious as to what fate had in mind for her. However, he'd _hoped_ towards the end that it was perhaps something else the unknown author of Underland's fabled Oraculum had gotten wrong, some other minor detail that had been overlooked or perhaps added in for dramatic flair.

After all, hadn't the dratted story referred to soft, nicely proportioned Alice as male? Despite his admittedly mixed use of pronouns, Tarrant knew _that_ she most certainly was not. Male, that is. So if that part of the legend was wrong, well, why not the galumphing back bit? That made just as much sense as being incorrect the Alice's sex. Seemed like an _awfully important_ detail, that, whither or not Underland should expect a male or a female champion to save them.

Why, that was the reason they'd all felt so safe on that Horunvendush Day. As long as they'd had a female bound to the armor, they needn't worry about the Jabberwocky, because the one the horrid creature was destined to fight was male, were they not? In a typically mad Underlander's way of thinking, Queen Mirana had decreed that as long as a female was kept was kept in the knight's suit of armor all would be divine. Because if there was no male wielding the sword, then there would no reason for the Jabberwocky to fight as well, as the terms of the prophecy would not be fulfilled, hmm?

Oh, how wrong they all were! Tarrant never blamed the White Queen; they had all thought the same.

So it was with no small amount of fear but a greater amount of hope, that he had told Alice she could stay. It was a frabjous day, _the_ Frabjous Day. If one such detail as whom Underland could expect to do the saving could be wrong, then surely, _surely, _that savior's abrupt exit could be incorrect as well?

But it was not to be. Alice drank the blood and all that was left for the Hatter to do was wish her Fairfarren. She evaporated, as Chess is still wont to do, and was gone that quickly.

Immediately after, the Queen clapped her hands, twice, and a page stepped forward, opal encrusted box in hand. Mirana gracefully opened it (as she knew no other way of doing so besides gracefully), and therein sat rows upon rows of empty, pewter topped vials. Jabberwocky blood was too rare, and too valuable, to waste, even if harvesting it did make her gag. Hatter knew the Queen well enough that he could parse her reasoning; the sooner the blood was gathered, than the sooner she could commence the celebratory feasting. Work, then play, that was the way, even in Underland.

"Hatta." she called loudly. (But not too loudly! For it was not in her to be boisterous.) Tarrant walked towards her carefully, feeling as though he were the one dreaming, and not Alice as she claimed. For surely the Champion's evaporation would just prove itself to be a bad dream, one that would itself dissipate upon waking? His kilt swung as he stopped before the Queen, and he smacked it to make the pleats lay still. A recalcitrant kilt was the very last thing he needed, as even though it may be eager to dance, he was decidedly less so.

The Queen herself turned from her seated position (as another page, useful creature, had somehow or other procured a seat, so she did not need to place her Whiteness upon the dirty battlefield) and, smiling so that just a hint of a dimple showed, requested, "Would you fetch me the vial our dear Champion left behind?"

He didn't need to go far. Still moving as though he was underwater, a be-thimbled set of fingers reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, where sometime between Alice's leaving and the White Queen's harvest preparations the glass vial had found its way. Presently he passed it into Mirana's pale hands, the sight of which for an unaccountable reason made him want to sit upon the ground and have a good cry. She, still smiling, held it once more under the monster's tooth. (It must be said that she tried very bravely to not gag or cough during this process, but that she was completely a failure in this regard. The Queen was, however, successful in maintaining her smile, even through the coughing and gagging, and this, the Hatter thought, should be held in high regard as an accomplishment of the greatest sort.) Soon enough, the tube was full again, and she capped it with a flourish.

An unhindered smile bloomed across Mirana's features once again when she was not faced with open Jabberwocky jaws. Inclining her head a bit, she handed the vial to an unusually sober Hatter.

"It is not tea." she said gravely, "but may help, nonetheless?"

He placed the gift (for anything given by one's Queen is such) back in it's position in the left breast pocket interior of his jacket. It was unwise to refuse a favor from a Queen, even if that Queen was as benevolent as Mirana, and even if it was an unwanted one.

"Twas her decision to leave," Tarrant burred, inclining his own, behatted head towards Mirana once, a faint gesture of respect. Turning on his heel to leave, he added, "I shall not be galumphing after her. 'Twould be gallymoggers." For that is what the Queen had placed in his hands. There and back again if he so desired, with more certainty than a Babylonian candle. Which was the _there_ and which was _back_ _again_ was the problem, though. In her brief time in Underland, Alice had been to and fro and shrunk and grown at such alarming rates he found himself sometimes willfully forgetting the proper order. Alice would be appalled; as a child she'd been so very concerned with propriety. It'd been what made changing their places at tea ever so much fun.

"I never said you should, Hatta," was the Queen's gentle reply, breaking his revere. Tarrant stopped in his tracks. "A wish is a wish. It does not need to be used for travel, or Alice retrieval, unless that is what you desire. Think on it. The blood shall keep for seven days. After that, it may have…" here she paused, obviously groping for the right word, "unpredictable side-effects."

He nodded, once. "Aye, your Majesty." The reply was delivered without turning back around. "Now begging your pardon, but there's a feast being prepared that I need to not attend."


	2. A New Type of Day

_See Chapter One for Notes and Disclaimers**  
**_

* * *

Alice held no regret over her decision to leave Underland. She wasn't _thrilled_ that she needed to, but to say that she regretted the necessity would be untrue. Underland, while a beautiful place, was not where she was born to, and she had a mother and sister to look after. What would become of them with someone like Lowell as their sole protector? That wasn't even to mention the settling of her father's estate, the the running of the business...Oh, there was so much to do at home! Even her father's business was now moving apace; it was enough to nearly fill up every space in her mind!

But nearly is not completely. There were days when after being either brutally or subtly (or both) dismissed by those around her that should have looked on her as a peer, days when she returned to her quarters and would cry, and cry. She'd say to herself, "Where is the girl that slew the Jabberwocky, that tamed the brutal Bandersnatch?"

Most days, that would be enough to pull her out of self-pity; but some days, she'd continue on with, "The girl is gone, and a weeping woman is in her place! Oh, if the Hatter could see me now, he'd say my muchness was completely gone, I know he would! I can't have that now, can I?"

Then she'd say sternly to herself, "Tears never solved anything, old girl. It's time to pull yourself up by your boots and continue on!" and that would put paid to that.

Unfortunately, Alice was not having one of those such days, either. She was having a brand new type of day, one that she would rather have gone on not knowing one could have.

For the first time, she felt something very close to regret at not staying with her friends in Underland. And it could all be placed firmly on the shoulders of some fop that referred to himself as Theobald Chester Masinson (the third, he kept insisting, although Alice honestly did not know why any one person would name their child such a dreadful name, let alone have that name passed down for three generations). While she had in the past had her fair share of disagreements with equally disagreeable people, none of them riled her to the silent fury she currently felt. She longed for the sympathetic ear of the White Queen or the distraction of the March Hare with his many teacups, for the unreality of Underland's whimsy with a strength she hadn't experienced in months.

What, it could reasonably be inquired, flustered poor Alice so? There were many things, certainly, as one can not have an exceptionally poor day based on one interaction, despite however one may try. Alice was attending a small dinner party with a few of her late father's associates, shoring up shaky acquaintanceships and generally making nice with men she wanted to part from their money. Unpleasant all around, but ultimately needful if she was to continue growing the business at its current rate.

However, Theobald's insult was what pushed Alice's day from unpleasant to irredeemable. This Theobald told her loudly in the bluntest, harshest language possible that not only was she a poor businessperson, she was also a plain-featured old maid. That would have been awful enough, but she had grown immune to such attacks in recent months. No, what gobsmacked Alice was what he finally, worst of all, _most_ _horrible_ of all, ended his verbal attack with:

"I, for one, would not feel comfortable lending my funds to one so unimaginative."

She, Alice Kingsleigh, _unimaginative_?

So shocked at such an accusation (as she had _never_ been told such before), Alice was temporarily rendered speechless. This Theobald character seemed to take her silence as confirmation of his assessment.

"Just so." he smirked, then turned on his heel and walked away! By the time Alice regained her voice, Theobald was clear of the room; to chase after him would be ridiculous. Besides which, the damage had already been done. Already she believed she could hear the other business owners and possible investors around her making disapproving noises and shaking their heads gravely.

Alice wasn't sure what she had done to warrant the man's ire, but by the time the party was drawing to a close, the quiet murmurs were becoming pronounced declarations. Everywhere she turned there was another smirking face. She fancied she could see the specter of those hateful words (and more importantly, her floundering reaction to them) floating in the heads of each affluent gentleman. More than once she heard potential investors say to each other in poorly concealed whispers, "We can't invest in someone like that! This undertaking will take someone of determination and imagination, like the late Kingsley. I had heard his daughter was quite like him, but I guess we see tonight that it isn't so! We shouldn't invest in this!"

And they hadn't. Not a single gentleman put forth a farthing for the new outpost in Jakarta, and it was unlikely any would in the future, once word of the disastrous day reached their ears. Oh, what was Alice to do? She simply had to find a means of diffusing Theobald's hurtful propaganda. Would her father's business be ruined due to her _not _being as sharp tongued as she should?

Inconceivable!

"Oh, if only I could speak to them once again!" she moaned, collapsing with exhaustion face first into her bedpillows. "I know that I have at least some imagination; I have to!" she mumbled into the fabric. With a hearty sigh, she conceded wistfully, "But a bit of inspiration from my friends would not be amiss right now."

**-o-o-o-o-**

Little did Alice know that at that very same moment, Tarrant was sitting in his dilapidated living room staring at the glass tube resting on his mantle, thinking of her as surely as she thought of her friends Below. While her thoughts were mild regrets spurred by a rebarbative experience, the Hatter was wracked by indecision of a different sort.

When he had told the Queen and King of Hearts years ago during Alice's first visit to Underland that he was a poor man, the Hatter had not been exhibiting false modesty; he really was poor. Haberdashery, while a joy to him and his calling in life, was not a lucrative business. His eyes briefly strayed from the vial to the threadbare sofa opposite himself, to the peeling walls, then to the rug on the floor with holes in it, and finally back to the vial once again.

"And where would you have her establish our happy home, Tarrant?" he murmured. "To think a well-bred lady like herself could ever be happy with such a lot in life is madness indeed. You have well and truly begun to earn your title." Here he snorted a little bit. "Mad Hatter! She had the right of it, to leave, she did."

Even to himself, the Hatter thought it sounded as though he were attempting to talk himself out of an already formed decision. He looked down at his hands and the myriad cuts, scrapes, and burns that adorned his fingers. "Madness indeed…" he whispered.

For several moments he was lost, as he stared at his hands, lost amongst his list of things that being with the letter "M". He was just deciding to add "masochistic" to it when his best mate Thackery popped his head into the room.

"Hatta! It's time for tea!" he bellowed, and Tarrant snapped to attention. Pulling out his pocket watch, he held it aloft and said, jovially, "I suppose it is! Shall we go, then, Thack?"

The March Hare's eyes strayed up to the mantle and his lips pursed. Tarrant knew the Hare what the Hare was thinking: it had been four days already, not counting the feasting days, which numbered two (and of which the Hatter had been conspicuously absent from). Four days where Tarrant had just sat and stared at that horrid bit of glass, only stepping away for a quick spot of tea and to use the necessary room. Thackery apparently had decided the Hatter had brooded long enough.

"Time is no longer pouting!" he warbled, and Tarrant turned to give him a sharp look, all traces of jovality gone, along with his green eye color.

"Which is why we presently need to be going to tea, aye? Else we'd already be at tea, and wouldna be leaving to said such activity." He sighed, and the green flooded back into his irises. "Yes, Thackery, I'm well aware of time," he asserted, sounding suddenly tired, and older.

With one last glance at the mantel, the Hatter got up and went with his friend and tried to think of pleasant topics of conversation. Chess, Mallymkun, and their tea things awaited.

**-o-o-o-o-**

"Would you…just…hold…_still_!" an extremely frustrated male shouted.

"Hold still indeed!" a childlike woman's voice lisped back. "You are not the one with a dirk pointed between their legs, held by an individual who tried to _kill you_ in the very recent past!"

"Your Majesty…" Stayne (for it was indeed he, the Knave, whom had first spoken) replied in tones of beyond-tested patience, "I could simply kill you instead. Now stop wiggling and let me cut off those skirts!"

"Oh!" the Red Queen replied, voice taking on an entirely different, coquettish quality. "After my skirts, are you?"

With a rip and a tear, the offending fabric was gone, and soon Iracebeth stood in nothing but her plain white undershirt, bloomers, and a very bright pair of red stockings.

"That should help. Now hop on my back!" the Knave hissed. He himself was only clad in breeches and a loose fitting, lace up shirt. The leather armaments he usually adorned himself with sat in a pile with what remained of the Queen of Heart's battle ensemble, shredded to bits.

The Queen eagerly clamored up, and Stayne had to hunch over a bit to balance their center of gravity, which was precariously off due to her enormous head.

"Let's get out of here." he growled. "We have a coup to attend to." And so they began their long trek in search of the first door leading to Snud.


	3. Mocking Blood

_See Chapter One for Notes and Disclaimers**  
**_

* * *

He hadn't really intended to drink the blood at all.

It was an accident; yes, that's it. A horrible accident, a trick of Fate, despite whatever might be thought to the contrary! It's not as though he himself had raised the blasted thing to his lips and swallowed it down, was it?

Oh, bother. It was.

Tarrant had been sitting, staring at the vial as it mocked him mightily from its plush spot atop his sitting room fireplace. Dratted thing even had its own pillow. Despite his loathing for all it represented, the Hatter couldn't bear to destroy or even risk damaging the only tangible piece of _her_ he still had left. (_She_ was now just a pronoun in his brain; the proper pronoun, finally, but a pronoun nonetheless. Thinking of _her_ name just led to the Badness, as he referred to the times when his memory was just a black expanse of nothing, and he'd inevitably wake up with even-more disreputable, or worse, destroyed furniture.)

The pillow itself was one that he had made from the leftover scraps of fabric he had found stuffed into a teapot the first day he'd gone back to the Windmill. Light blue with a darker blue, almost black trim. He'd mused to Mallymkun that unless she wished to having boiling water dumped upon her head at random intervals (which sometimes, she went through phases in which she said she rather enjoyed that sensation) she had best leave off bedding down in various tea-pots.

Mallymkun had taken one look at the long strip of fabric in his hands and sneered, "It's not as though I'd be having anything to do with a color such as that, is it? Doesn't match my fur at all. You told me yourself that I'm more of a summer than a winter."

The Hatter had been lost in a rumination at that point, trying to recall when and why he would have told the Dormouse that she was a season of the year, and whatever that had to do with her bedding being in the teapot, and such bedding as was exceeding unflattering in color to one such as herself, when Mally brought him back to. "Hatta!" she shouted, spoon clanging hard against the side of the very tea pot in which the fabric had been found.

"I'm fine," he assured, and he really was. It was not a time of Badness; just a very deep ponder, was all. He focused once again upon his diminutive friend, and said, "I cannot say at all why you would call yourself a Summer, dear friend. Last I recalled, that which you called yourself was Mallymkun. Have you decided to change what we're to call you? I can think of a dozen names more suitable than Summer, to be true, as that lovely Season herself might become offended if you attempt to snatch that name out from under her, as it were. However, if you're really set on it, I suppose we can try. After killing Time, what's the bad opinion of a paltry Season?" The Hatter had been waving the tea-pot fabric wildly to emphasize his words as he spoke, and at this point he stopped and stared at the hand holding the fabric as if he'd never seen it before. "Well, hello, what's this?"

"That, Hatter, is what you asked me," Mallymkun said, in tones of extreme patience.

"I know that! Having just asked just right previously before you told me that I had asked you what it was. Really, Mally, if you can't say anything helpful, what's the use in replying at all?"

Her kind patience at an end at this rude reply, the Dormouse snapped, "The fabric you are presently holding in your right hand is what remains of the Alice's dress from before you shrunk her down to escape the Red Guard!" When the Hatter got into one of his moods, it was best to be as specific as possible. Tarrant knew Mally cared for him, she really did, but that didn't mean there were not times when it was clear she wanted to throttle him.

"The Alice's…dress?" he had said, and brought the fabric up to his nose before it was even a fully formed thought. To his extreme disappointment, all he could smell was tea. "It doesn't smell like the Alice."

Hands on hips, Mallymkun demanded, "And just how would you be about knowing what she smells like, hmm?"

The Hatter was as good as lost in the woods, though, as he could no longer hear his friend's voice. He stood from the table-tea, bread and butter and tarts forgotten and went straight into Windmill House, the House slamming it's door firmly shut behind him. (It being a clever house, and knowing when its occupants were best left to their own devices.)

"Well, I never!" huffed the mouse. (Again, not that the Hatter or anyone else save the House were able to hear her indignation. She was quite alone at the Tea Table, and so she decided take a nap inside one of the tea-pots after all. It did sound rather cozy.)

Normally the Hatter would have been able to whip up such a simple thing as a pillow in a matter of seconds (and he still was; that is to say, he hadn't suddenly lost the ability!) but for this, the pillow of the Alice's dress, (this was before he began to refer to her only as a pronoun) this, he would honor her by spending actual _minutes_ on its completion. He was sure Time wouldn't mind. And if he did, well, that was just too bad. It's not as if he were killing him again, was it? No, this was most productive indeed, so Time had nothing to complain about. (Not that it'd ever stopped him before, the grumpy sod.)

So minutes passed and when they were gone the Hatter had before him a smallish pillow made of the blue silk. His hands ran over the fabric, luxuriating in the feel of its softness. Briefly he toyed with the Idea of sleeping with it upon his bed, but it was too small for one to lay one's head upon. He put that Idea into his Unused Ideas jar (as it was a shame and a waste to just discard Ideas willy-nilly) and instead went with his second thought: that it was just the right size to place…that vial…upon.

He'd taken it to the sitting room, placed it upon the mantel, and then put the Jabberwocky blood on top. The Hatter was jealous of the vial for a moment, as it was small enough to be able to lay so upon Alice's dress in such a way. "Pishsalver would solve that problem for myself," he mused. "But that would leave my hat quite alone, and I know that Cat would come and abscond it away whilst I was asleep on that delightful little bed!"

It was a close call, but the Hatter decided in the end that it was best if he stayed in his right-proper Tarrant size with the hat safely atop his head; he'd still be able to look at them, after all, if he moved his patched together chair just so. So that is what he did. Days came and went with Tarrant giving them little to no regard until finally Thackery had come and roused him for tea, but even that wasn't able to hold his attention for long. Inevitably he'd drift away from the table and find himself right back in the chair, staring.

He'd begun to notice sometime during the long expanse of the time after _her_ (she had become a pronoun by now) that the blood within the vial was teasing him. Most times, it was just as it was when the White Queen had handed it to him; quite innocuous, its only abnormality being the vibrant purple hue. (Which really wasn't an abnormality, being Jabberwocky blood and all, and everyone knowing they bleed purple.)

But sometimes, mostly in the evenings after having tea with Thackery and Mallymkun, it would form shapes out of itself. Just in the very top of the vial, where it still had some room to contort, there being some empty space where Mirana had not filled it to the brim itself. There, it would briefly shape itself into very miniature scenes, ones that he was familiar with. Faces of persons long ago lost in the past, faces the Jabberwocky's blood remembered from when it had culled them from this earth. More often than not, though, when it was doing its rare contortions after tea at the top of the vial, it would form _her_ face, the blood remembering the one to spill it free from its body most clearly of all.

The Badness would come then, as he fought with himself over destroying the vial and maintaining the…_her_ happiness, or drinking the contents and securing his own.

It was during one such bout of the Badness that the accident occurred. All he was aware of was the blood forming her face, smiling in that winsome way she had when he'd returned from the Bloody Big Head's castle. He had been beaten, bruised, and so exhausted that he felt he must collapse, right there on the front steps, but then he'd looked up, and she was there, smiling, and he felt…better.

Yes, it formed _that_ smile, the one that only should have belonged to he and _her. _His last semi-coherent thought (as he never had fully coherent thoughts-perish the Idea, despite the waste!) was the vial, which was the one Alice had left behind (he was too far gone into the Badness to worry about the effect of not referring to her by a pronoun) should be as it was just at the moment she left.

Empty.

When he came to, there was no more Jabberwocky blood in the vial. There was a deep burning moving through his veins, so hot he thought he may soon be just a sooty hole upon the ground, as the rest of Clan Hightopp was. Would the Jabberwocky, then, be claiming the one Hightopp it had missed, finally, after all these years? It seemed rather unfair that it should, it already being dead and all.

A teacup smashed into the wall in front of him, and he turned around to see Thackery's more-desperate-than usual face staring back at him. "Hatta, what have you done?"

"I hardly know," was his reply before he collapsed to the ground, body seizing and a purple foam beginning to bubble from his lips.

It was nine days since the Frabjous Day.


	4. Trouble Brewing, Part One

Please see first chapter for full notes and disclaimers.**  
**

* * *

Alice and her sister Margaret walked side by side down a narrow, though busy, cobbled street on their way to their family's usual seamstress. It'd been decided between Mrs. Kingsley and her eldest that both girls were in dire need of new clothes; travel suits for Alice, and summer dresses for Margaret.

Alice had told them both that the idea of purchasing traveling clothes for herself was ridiculous, due to the likelihood that she would be traveling for business (let alone pleasure) in the near future had become slim-to-none after her failed attempts to gather funds for the proposed Jakarta outpost. However, Margaret was a woman whom had seen an opportunity to go shopping and she would not be denied.

Busying herself at first with counting their steps from the chaise to the walkway, then with how many street vendors called out to themselves while they walked (42 and 11, respectively), Alice soon became aware of that almost-indescribable, niggling feeling of being watched that one gets occasionally. She turned her head, looking this way and that; but she could see no one whom was obviously watching them.

They passed the final alleyway before the seamstress' shop. Alice peered down it as well, but still saw nothing. As her sister crossed the stoop and into the shop's darkened interior, Alice gave one last long search. Nothing. "It's just my imagination, is all," she said aloud, causing a few passers-by to give her odd looks. "Well, what little of it I have," she added, a touch of sarcasm tinting her voice. Giving up, she sighed and followed Margaret into the shop, pushing thoughts of strange feelings to the back of her mind as she prepared to deal with the dervish that was Margaret in the midst of a shopping fit.

A low chuckle rumbled out from the alley the two had just passed, and a tall man stepped out of the shadows. Theobald smoothed down his mustache and grinned to himself. "Soon, but not just yet, delightful creature," he murmured. "Very soon."

**-o-o-o-o-**

"Queen Mirana! Your Majesty!"

The White Court stopped its gliding procession through the candied-cherry tree grove as the Queen paused before a very out of breath, disheveled Dormouse.

"Yes, Mallymkun?"

"It's the Hatter, your Majesty! He's drunken the Jabberwocky blood!"

An even-wider smile bloomed across her face. "I knew he would, given a bit of time to consider. Has he returned, then, with our Champion?" She paused, seeing Mallymkun's level of frenetic behavior for the first time. It was more out of sorts than just the general tizzy Mirana expected the mouse would get in over the Hatter's return with Alice. (Because this would cause a tizzy indeed for the poor thing; she both did and did not want Alice to be around what she considered _her_ Hatter. She did not for the very reason that she considered him _hers_. She did, because she knew that it would make him most especially happy, and despite herself, Mallymkun quite liked the girl as well.) "And…?"

The mouse resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "He _just_ drank the Jabberwocky blood!"

"He…but it's been…" Mirana placed one of her pale hands over her face, and slowly shook her head back and forth. "Of course he did." Lowering her hand just enough to show her worried eyes, she asked, "Where is he?" This was quite muffled by her hand still being in front of her mouth, but luckily the Dormouse understood her just fine.

"The Mill House!"

The White Queen turned to her Court. "You will, of course, excuse me. I have something that needs to be addressed." Almost as one, every member of her court said, "Yes, your Majesty," bowed, and then turned away, save for two pages, one of whom already had a horse tacked and ready for her to climb upon; the other, having the steps she would need to easily sit upon the horse.

"Come up, friend," she encouraged the Dormouse, "We must make all due haste." The small rodent clamored to the top of the horse's head, and they made towards the gate leading to Witzend. When that gate opened, however, a sight awaited them that neither could have been prepared for.

Iracebeth stood on the last step leading up to Marmoreal. Her face and body were dirty; she was wearing only bloomers and a very tattered undershirt. Exhaustion made her sway under the weight of her regrettably giant head. What was most shocking, out of all of these things that comprised her appearance, was the arm that had once been chained to Ilosovic Stayne was no longer whole. Instead, it ended in a ragged and slightly putrefied looking stump just past her elbow.

"Miri…" she mewled, and her sister could not deny her. Mirana was off the horse (without the aid of her steps, even!) and in front of her in a moment. She'd always believed her sister was just ill from a growth in her head-and now she had the perfect chance!

Iracebeth was here of her own accord, humbled, dirty, and bleeding. Now Mirana could heal her!

"Oh, Racie!" she cried, gathering her sister into her arms. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes as emotion threatened to overwhelm her.

"Your Majesty!" the Dormouse piped in.

"Oh! Oh, of course!" The White Queen stepped back from the shorter woman, holding her gently by the shoulders. She called over her shoulder, "Guard!" not noticing her sister's ugly flinch when she did so. "Please see that Iracebeth gets a guest room and immediate healer care." She hugged her again, suddenly, and said, "I am so pleased you came to me, you don't even know, Racie! But I must go for now! I will return very shortly, I assure you!"

"Thank you, sister, for taking me in so," she croaked, in a voice that sounded as though it had gone long without use. "I'm so tired."

"Guard!" Mirana called again, a faint trace of impatience coloring her voice. "Take care of my sister. I must ride!" She climbed the steps her pawn-page provided her. Leaning down one last time to her returned prodigal, she said, "I will be back soon, dear sister. Rest now, and we will talk later."

"You are too kind," the former Red Queen said. Mirana smiled brilliantly, and turned away as sharply as she could, and still maintain a sense of grace. She did not see the triumphant smirk cross Iracebeth's lips. "Too kind indeed," she said, as a Bishop took her arm and began leading her into the castle.

**-o-o-o-o-**

A cloud of dust rose from where Alice's body hit the checked ground. He stepped forward; he had to do something! The fell creature had just hit her so hard she rattled inside the armor. But not being a slayer of monsters, nor yet encased in enchanted armor (that would tell him where, and how to strike…how useful!) the Hatter struck the beast in (what was to him) the most obvious spot: what was right in front of him. His sword flashed down and sank into the tail, earning the ire of the beast. A grin stretched across his face as the Jabberwock turned towards him. This was good! This was helping Herself most expediently!

Well, he _was_ helping until the Knave attacked. How dare that piece of repugnant refuse in the general form of man-sized flesh stop him from assisting _her_? She was battling a creature that had made the fully grown piss themselves in terror, and _this_ Knave was going to keep _him_ from _his_ girl?

A wave of infuriated, protective possession rose through him. _No! _he thought. He'd kill Stayne first. The Badness came over him in a wave; one moment, he was aware as he ever was. The next, Tarrant knew nothing but the crash of steel and the whirl of a dance much more deadly than Futterwacken ever was. (Well, not including that one time in Witzend, but no one liked to talk of _that_ anymore.) That, and her name, over and over, rushed through his brain. Alice.

_Her name is Alice_, whispered across his mind, lending a consistency to his strikes few knew the mad man could obtain beforehand.

He fought, he cheated, and he scrabbled in the dust until the Knave was lying on his back, beaten from the pure force of the Hatter's determined fury. This beast was causing him to turn his attention away from his Alice, and if (_when_, the Badness seethed) she came to harm, he'd not be able to help her. For even a small bruise upon her fair skin Stayne deserved death.

_Alice!_ his mind screamed as Tarrant lifted the sword two-handed and held it ready, prepared to plunge it straight through the cavity where, if the Knave had a heart, it would be. Then there was her voice calling him as though from a long way off.

Looking up, the Hatter's eyes cleared to green. There was no battlefield before him; no soldiers, no Queens-not even the Tweedles. Just a thick, pervading mist-and Alice, herself.

"Hatter!" she cried again as he lowered his arms to stare at his empty hands. (After all, swords don't just disappear into nothingness, and he was wondering what his hands could have possibly done with such a large piece of metal in so short an amount of time.)

Alice's arms flew about him as he was still considering his hands, her face buried against his neck. She was pressed so close to him that when she spoke again, her lips brushed against his skin. It made him shudder, in a way most definitely not related to revulsion in the least little bit.

"So you are not the real Alice, then," he sighed, hugging her nonetheless. She pulled back slightly and stared at him, her golden curls shining brighter than any sun, hurt etched across her face. "Why would I not be myself? Hatter, you are the one that always said I was myself, just with more or less muchness than usual!"

"Because you're touching me." he whispered, and at that she pulled away completely, a question in her eyes. Always questions in her eyes, a query on her lips...she truly was one of Curiosity's children. It was one of the things he most lo-

"Oh, but you seem so real," he said, stopping himself from completing the thought. It would do no good to think such things, in front of either a real or not-real Alice. The thoughts frightened him; he didn't know what she'd do if faced with them. The thought was left uncompleted, but the emotions behind it were still there, as he reached a thumb up to brush it across her lips.

"I've touched you before," Alice asserted, voice fuller of breath than usual. "In the Red Queen's dress studio. Don't you remember? I thought I was the one that was supposed to forget."

"Remember…mind…mine. Alice?" he questioned, and she reached up with both hands and grasped his, where it still caressed her face. "Yes, it's me."

Suddenly he wrenched her to himself. He had to be sure, don't you know. Sure that it was really her, really _the_ Alice and not a _not_-Alice, and…oh, it sounded like rationalization (which was something he usually avoided at All Costs) even to himself. Tarrant didn't care.

The need was greater than himself, it was greater than tea...it was even greater than the Badness. His lips found hers, clumsily at first, desperate of their own accord. "Greedy," he said against her mouth, chastising his lips for their errant behavior, but the word was lost in the sounds of their meeting flesh.

She responded, timidly, as if her own lips were unsure of their welcome against his own. (Silly Alice lips! Hadn't his issued a very specific invitation? Oh. They hadn't. They'd just arrived. Well, he'd have to remember to next time send a card a full twenty four hours before the event, so no such modesty would be necessary. Would the March Hare have a few vellum ones he could use, perhaps?)

She pulled away before he was ready for her to (would he ever be ready for such rapture to end?) and stared at him, eyes wide. Her fingers found her lips and lingered there, feeling their swollen state. She blinked once, and once more, and then she turned away and _ran, _as fast as she could.

Tarrant went to follow her, but she dissolved into mist as she went, and became just another wisp of the fog that swirled around him.

"That was the Real Alice, then," he said, quite bewildered. The Hatter knew it must be for the simple fact that she ran away. It was then, and only then, in his Alice-less state, that he stopped and looked at his surroundings, or lack thereof.

"And where would this be?"


	5. Trouble Brewing, Part Two

_See first chapter for full notes and disclaimers.  
_

* * *

_Iracebeth, the former Red Queen, was wearing a gown that looked as though it had been spun from pure silver. She stepped daintily over the tiles of Marmoreal's great hall, simpering as she reached the White Queen's side. "A word, dear sister, if you would." _

"_Of course!" Mirana cried in delight, hands fluttering in the joy of being able to please someone. She turned, smiling, not seeing the dagger that swung towards the side of her throat until it was too late. "It's not a beheading," Iracebeth grinned as her sister collapsed, "but it will do, I suppose." The blue of the Queen's blood began soaking into the walls, the flooring, and even the furniture took on the cool hue. As this was occurring, Iracebeth turned, and faced towards Alice's dream self, who was there and yet not-there, as this vile act of treachery was taking place. _

"_So begins the new reign of the Queen of Hearts," she said, her childlike inflection adding terror to the words. "I'm thinking of a new color scheme, this go around. It'll help differentiate it from the last, you know." She gestured about the hall, where now everything that was not blue was adorned with silver hearts. "I quite like it. What do _you _think, Alice?"_

Alice woke with a scream. Her fair hair was plastered to the side of her head with sweat in some spots, and yet in others stood almost straight out in a wild disarray. Almost immediately she began shaking as chills and more-than-a-faint sense of dread pervaded her body. She had been having strange dreams all night. First, she remembered one that featured the Hatter, which felt so real! Yet he would have never behaved in such a forward manner with herself! Flushing as she recalled him pulling her against himself, she pushed that aside as she started to focus on the dream she'd just woken from. The Queen of Hearts, with her knife and those cruel, uncaring words as he sister bled at her feet...

Two dreams of Underland in the same night? No, something was not right, not right at all.

"Alice, dear, what is it?" her mother cried, bursting into the room. "Shall I call-?"

But Alice was already holding up her hand to forestall her mother. When she was feeling this poorly, the last thing she wanted was to see her mother's fool of a physician. "I'm fine, mother. I think."

Helen Kingsleigh sank down onto the side of her daughter's bed, her nightskirt pooling towards the floor. "Dreaming again?" she said, in an entirely different tone. It was the voice her mother used that recalled for Alice a half-remembered conversation Helen had once had with her father, whispered words of _I feel badly for the child, but really, these dreams of hers had gone on quite long enough_-

"Yes, mother," Alice dutifully replied. As much as she knew the dreaming bothered her mother, Alice knew that her mother would be furious if she thought Alice was lying to her. "This last one was…worse. I had two dreams tonight, you know," she said, a bit importantly. "The first started out unpleasant, but turned…not quite unpleasant. The second, though…" she stopped for a moment, then said, "I almost wish I could go back to having the same dream all the time, as I used to. These new dreams are terribly unsettling. At least the others had a sense of familiarity to them. These are…so real."

Her mother laid a hand to her forehead, and jerked it back quickly, as though burned. "Why, Alice, you're positively feverish! It's no wonder you're having queerer dreams than usual! Let me get you a cool rag."

"No, mother, I.." but her mother, now armed with a purpose that could potentially help her child instead of sitting idly by as she watched her suffer, was already gone.

Images from the two dreams swirled through Alice's mind at a dizzying rate. The first, where she began by calling the Hatter's name as he fought an enemy she couldn't see, holding a sword that wasn't there, had seemed so present. When she had hugged him to herself, she could smell tea and honey and fresh ink, of all things, and underneath that the tang of Jabberwocky blood. And when he had pulled her close, and carefully kissed her, Alice had been able to taste his breath, mellow and soothing, and feel his jacket under her fingers where she had grasped his coat in shock.

She'd pulled away, dismayed at herself for dreaming such a thing to begin with (why, she was acting perfectly _wanton_, and that wasn't acceptable, even in a dream!) and turned and ran, and ran, until she faded into mist the way she had the Frabjous Day. She'd faded, and floated right into the second dream, where Iracebeth slew the White Queen and became the Blue Queen of Hearts. It hadn't felt as true as the previous dream had. She hadn't been able to move or interact at all, to start. She'd been forced to watch immobile as the former Red Queen murdered her sister. Everything was foggy and surreal, but Alice could still see the spraying arch of Mirana's blue blood, the glee on Iracebeth's giant face…

Alice leaned over the side of her bed and was very neatly sick, all over the floor and her bed skirt.

"Oh, Alice! You're very ill!" her mother said, quite unhelpfully, as she re-entered the room. She opened the door back out into the hallway, and requested of the servant standing just outside for a few maids to be gotten up to assist Alice. She then returned to her daughter's side and, carefully stepping around the sick, said, "Dear, I'm afraid you're much too ill for your party tomorrow."

"No!" Alice nearly shouted, forcing the words past her burning throat. "It's too important! It could save father's business." She forced a smile to her lips. "I just have a case of nerves, I suppose."

Helen didn't look convinced. "Darling, nerves do not make you have a high fever and wake up screaming in the middle of the night! It would explain the-" she broke off and looked meaningfully at the other side of Alice's bed. "But not the other." Two maids entered the room, sleep still in their eyes, and each swallowed as they saw the mess upon the floor. They looked at each other and seemed to say, without a word at all, _well, best get this over with_. Then they walked towards the bed. "We'll be needing to strip this bedding, mum," one said aloud, curtseying as she did so.

"Alright, Alice, come along," her mother put an arm under her shoulder and helped her out of bed. "If you're going to insist on the madness of still hosting that affair tomorrow, you're going to need more sleep. I'll settle you down into the guest room while the maids clean up in here."

"Yes, mother," Alice said again, exhaustion tugging at her eyelids. She desperately wanted at least a sip of water, as her mouth tasted most foul, but was too tired to ask for one. All she was able to do was affirmatively respond to her mother's clucking, and that was most likely because she had been doing it her entire life. Soon she was in the new bed and drifting off, thinking of Underlandian Queens and how the Hatter's lips had felt against her own.

**-o-o-o-o-**

"In closing, gentleman, not only would this endeavor be financially advantageous," she smiled, "which is always an excellent thing-but it would also be the first of its kind into this particular region of India. I believe I more than proved my determination and natural amiability with local personages of exotic locations during my recent trip into mainland China."

Alice indeed hosted her party the next day despite being ill.

After her last meeting with potential investors and the unexplainable interference of that Theobald character, Alice had sat and pondered, pondered and sat, turning her thoughts every which way, attempting to come up with an idea to get them all together that would show just how serious she was about the situation at hand yet show an almost demented whimsy. It was what they expected, after all, so why not give it to them?

For all she sat and pondered, however, good thoughts did not easily come; so many ideas came and were dismissed before fully formed that she made herself dizzy many nights. One idea kept presenting itself over and over to her, bowing and genuflecting, and she kept labeling it as too unimaginative, because after all, it wasn't her idea at all! In the end, though, she realized she needed to do something, and soon, and so began the preparations for her last effort to resuscitate her father's suddenly endangered business.

She decided to host a tea party.

Now, tea parties were not where business was typically discussed with any serious intent unless it was by gentlemen whispering to each other behind the other guest's backs and making discreet little inside deals. They were for fun conversations and gentle amusements, the type of affair ladies were expected to thrive upon and their husbands grumble about.

Alice intended to have a bit of both with hers. After all, she said, hadn't at her Underlandian tea party they not only discussed riddles, but the most serious business of whether or not she was herself, and that she was to help overthrow a demented monarch? If that wasn't serious conversation, she didn't know what was. It may not have been the fate of a realm but Alice felt just as passionately about her father's business. Passionate enough to host this party, even whilst feeling as though she had been turned inside out, then right side in again, all in one evening. Her limbs were shaky, and her skin still flushed, but she was determined to see this through.

When the guests had arrived she made sure that instead of her usual trouser suit combinations that she had taken to wearing (and of what a stir there was over that, initially!) she was wearing a very be-ribboned and adorned afternoon dress, complete with delicate gloves. She wore her hair down, however, and still passed on stockings and a corset underneath the frothy creation. (It wouldn't do to be in the middle of completing an agreement and end up face down in the pudding for lack of breath, would it?)

She personally helped each gentleman that arrived to their seats; she simpered as she poured their tea. Soon after Alice opened the floor to whimsical conversation, making many of the gentlemen question why they were there. She had made sure to invite Theobald and sat him as close as possible to her personage (despite how difficult it had been to find an address for him; how odd, that) and when everyone had their tea, had already made great bounds of light conversation, and were nibbling on pastries provided by her sister's cook, Alice herself sat down with a great, sudden whirling plop into her seat. She leaned close to Theobald, and then closer again, and closer still until she was near as possible to Theobald without actually touching the man.

"Can you tell me something, sir?" she said, in a general announcement like voice.

At this the man became very nervous. Alice could practically hear his thoughts: certainly she would not call out his behavior at their last meeting in such a public setting, would she? What she didn't hear was him thinking that, while she was unconventional, he couldn't think someone who looked as lovely as she could be _completely_ mad. (For despite his claim to the contrary, he did find her rather pretty; and it was generally understood that a prerequisite for madness was being terribly unattractive. It was why gingers, he mused, were more common in asylums than any others.) What she said next, though, called that assumption into question.

"Can you tell me sir…why is a raven like a writing desk?" Alice couldn't help the horribly mischievous glint that surely entered into her eyes. More than a small part of her enjoyed watching the man start when Theobald realized she was mocking him. _Why_, she could almost hear him drawl in dismay, _she wasn't intimidated by him at all!_ Visibly rousing himself, Theobald sat up straight in his chair and claimed he'd just have to answer her silly riddle, then. Several nearby gentleman guffawed, eager to see where the current battle of wits would take them. They'd all heard of Theobald's insult to young Alice several weeks prior, and were interested to see how the miss handled herself when faced directly with him again. It was, Alice suspected, the reason why most of them had agreed to attend a tea party in the first place.

"Let me see," he said, and thought on it for a moment. Then he replied, with no small amount of triumph in his voice, "Both are in possession of black, inky feathers."

Alice laughed. "True and yet not true," she mused. "While a raven is undoubtedly in possession of indisputably dark-toned feathers, one could hardly say they themselves were inked…Although wouldn't that be terribly convenient? And a writing desk may possess any number of colors of ink in its inkpots, may it not?" The man sat back, clearly bewildered by her logic. _Which wasn't even that odd or circular, as some logic can be, so for him to be confused showed a lack of imagination on his own part, not mine_, she thought smugly.

She was, however, terribly distracted despite her little triumph. The party was going well, very well indeed, but thoughts of her dreams the night before kept parading before her. That coupled with a fever that felt as though it were continuing to rise and her stomach clenching ominously was bad enough, but most irritating of all, the one thing that truly made Alice call her sanity into question, was the itching.

She itched _everywhere_.

At the time, she mused, her dress had seemed like a good idea. A way of disarming the crabby old men that surrounded her by making herself look prettier, charming, and slightly empty headed.

But now! Oh, how she _itched_. The lace that adorned the creation rubbed most painfully against her tender skin, What had seemed like a light-weight fabric when on the bolt was becoming heavier and heavier as the party wore on. Alice took a moment to lift her skirt up under the table in order to inspect her skin. Darkish purple-red hives rippled-actually rippled, as in moved of their own accord, as if they were alive and sentient-under her skin.

She abruptly swished the skirt down and looked up to see Theobald studying her with no small amount of amusement. She had to put the itching and those disturbing hives out of her mind. This was important! She could see many of the gentlemen were wavering in their former, hasty decision to not finance her; another half hour, and they would be hers. All she had to do was last until the end of the party.

She wasn't aware that she had slumped in her chair until Theobald's voice came from very near her ear. "Miss Kingsleigh?" he asked, grasping her shoulder. Her vision swam in and out of focus, and her hearing seemed to be off, as well. The man had sounded almost…concerned. Why should the bloody man care of her well-being? He'd done his level best to destroy her father's dream and make her miserable.

"I feel so queer," she managed to say, and then retched suddenly. _Oh, not again_, she'd thought, as a mucousy purple foam expelled from her mouth. What _had_ she eaten that would be that shade of purple? She hadn't had any more of Aunt Imogen's blackberry jam, had she? No, she'd learned her lesson from that the last time. Theobald leapt back in shock, but it was too late. Alice was able to see her sick quite well against the cream linen of his pants. It was so purple, as purple as her hives.

She felt the overwhelming urge to apologize, but was afraid to open her mouth. Aware that all the eyes of the party were on her, she felt shame squirm through her veins. This was not how she wanted to leave a lasting impression on these gentlemen. She swayed in her seat, and Theobald stood, helping her out of her chair and unto the ground.

"Miss Kingsleigh!" he cried, sounding very upset indeed. When she didn't respond, (as she was laying there and thinking how luxuriantly cool the grass blades felt under her flushed cheek) he nearly shouted, "Alice!" and shook her a bit.

She was just about to tell him that shaking an ill person rarely has a pleasant result, despite the fact that she'd have to open her mouth to do so, when he took her face in his hands and turned it towards him. Vision still swimming, Alice squinted to try to be able to see, but all she could get was a fuzzy outline of the man, and lots of light-colored blurs moving behind him. Ah, the rest of the party was up and about seeing what was happening, then. Lovely.

"Your eyes…" Theobald said, sounding puzzled and more than a bit worried. "They look just like _his_ eyes. I'd know that green anywhere. But how-?"

Hearing of green eyes brought her back to what little lucidity she had. "I don't have green eyes," she whispered. She blinked hard, and looked at the man leaning above her, the man she and everyone else had been calling Theobald.

He at that moment very clearly looked just like Ilosovic Stayne. Well, what the Knave would look like in a cream colored party suit, at any rate. He was Stayne, nonetheless.

"Get away from me!" she hissed, and tried to push him back, but her muscles were too weak to do so. She fought against it desperately, but felt a wave of fatigue slam through her (she hadn't felt this terribly since the Bandersnatch wound had festered!) as her eyelids drooped under the strain. Then there was nothing but silence and a sea of blackness as consciousness left her.

**-o-o-o-o-**

Stepping into the mist cautiously, Alice held up her skirts as she stepped further and further through the fog. Why was she still wearing this blasted dress? And her surroundings seemed so very familiar, and yet strange and wrong at the same time. There was nothing around her, no walls, no sky, and seemingly no flooring. (Although there must have been, she reasoned, otherwise she'd be standing on nothing, and that sounded like a Very Bad proposition indeed. So she decided there _must_ be a floor, just to be safe.)

"Hello? Is there anyone here?" she called out. She wasn't truly expecting an answer, and so was surprised when she heard a familiar voice say from behind her, "So you've returned after all."

She turned around, dropping the edge of her skirt as she did so. "Hatter!" After her last, very vivid dream of him, she felt shy and awkward in his presence. She looked down at where her feet should be resting on the ground, but that didn't help at all, as she saw them only amongst swirling mist. Jerking her head back up, she looked at the Hatter's face. He, too, seemed suddenly withdrawn in her presence. Then he began speaking.

"I believe in cases such as these it is the established mode to express a sense of apology or even shame for the sentiments most graphically, and seemingly unwillingly, bestowed upon your person. However I can not say that I regret the action, or that the action itself holds any regret in it, as I'm most prodigiously glad I did it, even though I didn't send an invitation beforehand. I would have sent one, do you see, had I known you were coming, and then you needn't be so shy with-"

"Hatter!" Alice laughed, awkwardness forgotten. "Whatever are you speaking of?"

His gaze fell to her lips, narrowing in on them with a disturbing intensity. "So you're the not-Alice, then. Good of you to establish it from the start. I knew the other was the real Alice, do you see, when she ran away. You should really look less like each other. It would make it ever so much less confusing for us whom are not an Alice at all."

A feeling that Alice couldn't properly describe crept into her midsection. "I'm Alice," she asserted. If this was real, and it certainly felt so, and the Hatter knew of her last dream when they'd...then that meant her last dream was real, which meant…

"Shall I prove it, then?" she asked, reaching forward and taking one of his hands in hers.

Joy lit his features from within. "So you are, then!" He looked down at where their hands were clasped together. "So you are indeed!" He went to grasp her about the waist, then paused in the motion.

"Too forward. Must see about those vellum cards," he said, under his breath. The idea that he was going to kiss her again buzzed through Alice, and when he didn't, she was surprised at her own feeling of disappointment. What a scarlet woman was she, to be disappointed when a man did not make advances on her person! She focused instead then on something that she should have from the beginning.

"Where are we?"

"I believe the question is where we are _not."_

"Well, we are not in either London nor Underland." Alice said.

"Exactly!" the Hatter beamed. "So if we are not there, then we are-?"

"Somewhere Else?" Alice guessed. "I was at a party, but then I was ill, and-and the Knave was there!"

"And now we're here together! It's not exactly what I would have wanted, but how often does one get exactly what they wish?" He turned and began walking, and Alice trotted to catch up with him.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"The Knave?" Tarrant replied, responding to her previous statement instead of her current question. "Oh, good. The White Queen has been talking to me quite constantly, you see, but when I talk back, she completely ignores my statements. Quite rude, even if she is a monarch. She's been wondering where he got off to." He tilted his head to the side, as though hearing a voice she could not. "Someone is calling me, and it seems you can not follow…if they are successful this go-around," he paused, then added, "For now."

A smile that didn't completely reach his eyes stretched across his lips. "A dream and yet not. It seems I have not been here so long as what Time would have me believe. He really is a pugnacious fellow. I may kill him again, just for the sport of it." The Hatter touched the side of her face, softly, the bandages and thimbles on his fingers sliding across the smooth skin. "The White Queen says to look in a mirror when you are able." Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead, gently, before fading to mist.

Alice awoke almost instantly, and rolled out of her bed. Stumbling towards her wash-stand, she knocked over the ewer full of water in her haste to reach her looking glass. Not caring as the water spilt to the floor, she held the glass up and stared into the reflection there.

Someone had changed her out of her party dress and into her nightclothes, and her hair, which had been carefully pinned and styled was laying loose upon her shoulders. These things seemed like small details though compared to what immediately arrested Alice's attention when she gazed upon herself in the glass.

The Hatter's green eyes stared back at her where her own blue should have been.


	6. Green Perspective

_See chapter one for full notes and disclaimer._

* * *

The tall man who called himself Theobald paced back and forth in front of the door, his long strides eating up the distance of the span within two steps. At the third he was turning about to go the other way again-so it was step, step, turn, and back again.

He smoothed back his long black hair, then grimaced to himself for the action. Though he did truly have long hair, to those around him, (those simple, _simple_ Abovegroundians) it appeared as though he was closely shorn. So to the casual bystander it was as though he was running his hand through the air about his head. Glancing quickly up and down the hall, he gave a sigh of relief upon seeing that there was no one about to catch his mistake.

That was fine, then. After making such gains in his attempt to be inconspicuous while here Above, in Alice's world, he would hate to draw attention to himself for such little incongruities. Not that it may matter, now, if even one of his suspicions was correct.

Until the moment Alice had retched all over him (Stayne, for it was he, winced slightly at the memory, still so fresh) he'd believed he as rather competently executing his chosen task. After just a day of Banishment, he and Iracebeth both decided that almost anything was better than their current predicament. They had discussed many different ways of returning themselves to the positions of power they had enjoyed.

In the end they had a rough outline of what needed doing: Firstly, Iracebeth would ingratiate herself into her sister's good graces (not that hard of a task, they mused, as Mirana was exceedingly naïve) while Stayne sought out the Alice. When he found her, he was to crush anything she held dear (to amuse Iracebeth) and then kill the wench. (For practicality's sake. It wouldn't do to go to the effort of a coup when Underland's Champion was still running about somewhere, would it?)

Iracebeth would meanwhile be acting the reformed sister, and secretly talk to those courtiers that might be sympathetic to a new way of thinking (as there would always be those willing to betray their monarch for the promise of power). After his task was complete, Stayne would re-join Iracebeth and together they would slay the White Queen, thus becoming the new King and Queen of Underland.

When Stayne had actually reached Above, he was amazed by the Alice's London. How could such a drab, broken looking place amuse such a shining woman? It took him nearly a week to discover her residence; five more for him to set himself in a position where he could do Iracebeth's bidding and destroy what Alice held dear. (Although he didn't understand this 'business' that everyone went on about, he did understand Court politics, and they functioned much the same.) It was at the last party, the one in which Alice was attempting to raise funds for a journey, that a new idea came to him.

Why should he support Iracebeth, a ruler whom had already been overthrown once (and whose policies made such an event a likely recurrence) and take a woman whom he shuddered to even look upon as his Queen? Why indeed, when there was before him one that was beloved by the people of Underland (but not so annoyingly pristine as the White Queen) and that he almost burned in his lust for? It was a quick decision to remove himself from any sense of loyalty to the former Red Queen and focus instead on crowning a new Queen.

After Alice became ill at her tea party (he growled to himself in annoyance-why a tea party? There was an easy answer to that question, but it was one he found extremely unpalatable) he was consumed by dubiety to the point that he was concerned about the success of his own private plot.

Stayne suspected that Iracebeth had sent someone else besides himself Above, that her trust in him was not as absolute as he had once been led to believe (he was conveniently ignoring the fact that he'd originally planned to kill her in his ruminations) and that she had sent someone to inelegantly poison the girl. The panic he barely wanted to acknowledge at the idea was so foreign to him that it left the taste of ash in his throat.

His first concern was not even for himself or that his plans that would all tumble to ruin without the girl. Yes, that was there as well, swirling around in his circular thoughts. What frightened him was that his initial concern had been for Alice and Alice alone. Not the threat of another agent from Underland, not the possibility that the Red Queen mistrusted him, but simply Alice.

Stayne had knelt beside her and really looked at what was happening to her, pushing the hair out of her face and peering into her eyes to try to identify what was being used against her. What he saw surprised him-it appeared to not be Iracebeth's doing after all, for he knew of no one, not even she, who could cause what plagued the girl.

Stayne rather thought it might have been easier to handle if it had just been the Red Queen's doing, after all.

He knew that color she spewed; it was the shade of rancid Jabberwocky blood. (He had seen the blood once, long ago, but once was enough to etch the sight of it on his memory.) The Knave believed the blood was all that was binding her to her original realm, and it was curdling in her veins. That was not natural. Jabberwocky blood was fairly temperamental, much like the beast it came from. However, after the blood was successfully ingested, it bound to your own, making it possible for your wish to be a reality.

Once a wish was granted, it could not be taken back. If the blood had been going to reject Alice, it would have done so almost immediately, and immolated her from the inside out within hours. (He was willing to bet his best eye patch that Queen Mirana hadn't told her precious Champion of _that_ possibility!) But with this, Alice's current situation…it was almost as if the blood was attempting to travel back outside of her body; that it was unbinding itself from her…and if that were the case, the more Jabber blood she lost, the greater the likelihood would be that she would simply wink out London and back into Underland.

Theoretically.

What frustrated Stayne most was that all he had at the moment were theories. If this, if that. He despised having to think any more than necessary. Tell him whom to bed or whom to slay and it would be done. This subterfuge grated on his nerves, especially when he had no one to report back to and discuss his discoveries with. Even his horse would have been a welcome companion at this point, but he had no one, and too much time to think.

Underland didn't accept humans often. There had been instances where the land took in whole families, yes, such as what happened with what was the origins of Clan Hightopp-but those instances were few and far between. Sometimes desperate Underlandian families had traveled Above to search for healthy children, and left them pig-children in their stead; but that practice had been dissolved during his own childhood.

What _didn't _happen was human children wandering into their land without the invitation of one of its current denizens, and yet that is what child-Alice had done. Later it was said that Underland itself tricked her into its borders, but Stayne didn't know how much of that was truth and how much of it was idle gossip. What _was_ true was that Underland had bent itself to her will in an attempt to woo her but in the end, after her fun and her games were over, and her grand adventure successful, Alice had stepped away, back towards staid London.

That she did this once was amazing; when she did it a second time, after Underland lured her back through that Looking Glass, was nothing short of extraordinary. Events and creatures and people were all put into her path by the land itself in an attempt to sway her decision to stay; it even went so far as to crown her. Imagine! Being crowned by Underland itself! Still she left. One moment she was there, sitting at dinner, not eating with Iracebeth and Mirana; the next she was gone, no explanation.

Everyone had been in quite an uproar after that. Why would a girl-child, whom was crowned by Underland itself to be a Queen, alongside the White and the Red, just up and leave the place that adopted her as one of it's own? Some said it was because she didn't care for them; that she didn't want to rule a realm not her own. Stayne believed something else entirely, something that Absolem the caterpillar had agreed with him on, when they were still on speaking terms.

It wasn't that she didn't want to stay; it was that she never really considered it an option. Out of the six impossible things she claimed to believe every day, staying in her 'Wonderland' was never one of them. Because it had never truly been real to her, even as she was experiencing things that no mere child could dream into existence.

And so both times when she was a child and she truly had wanted to leave, the land had to let her go. Whither by waking up, disappearing, or as it was now, with convenient Jabberwocky blood, she was always given the option to leave. It seemed to the Knave now, though, that Underland was deciding to remove that choice from her; perhaps it thought that three times was too many, and it was no recalling what it considered one of its own? It was obvious the land wanted her there; but why allow her to leave, and then pull her back thus? It seemed horribly inconvenient for all involved.

For that matter, if it was a question of how the blood was aging within her body, it would have turned in her veins long before now-it had been over a year in the Aboveground, and last he knew, it had been five-and-one-half days in Underland. (The extra one-half day being used to find a rock large enough to cleave Iracebeth's arm from its shackle. He grinned briefly at the memory, but soon resumed his pacing.) Time would do that to them in Underland. Sometimes it would run much slower than Above, as it was now; others it would be much faster, as when Alice had visited them. (Yet another sign that Underland favored her so; this human girl!)

Stayne himself had been Aboveground in Alice's time for two months. The weight of the Perspective he'd drawn about himself (what he referred to his ability to disguise himself in plain sight) was making him sluggish and irritable; he needed to get back to Underland soon. It was so much effort to appear to have two eyes where you only have one, let alone all the other minute changes he'd wrought. Yet she'd seen through him, admittedly only after her eyes…

Her eyes had been disturbingly different. She'd looked like the Hatter. The Hatter, with his damnably excellent Sense of Perception, of being able to See things that should have gone unseen.

The Hatter. Never before had Ilosovic Stayne actually felt something more than a mild disgust or apathy towards a rival; certainly not enough to hate them. (Not even the Red Queen, and that was saying something. Although, until recently, he had thought of her as an ally, not a rival.) It was always business, never personal-but for the last Hightopp, oh…he was willing to make an exception. (Why was it the gingers that always confounded him so?)

First, his refusal to succumb to his torture techniques had been extremely annoying. Then, the way he'd seen him looking up at (what he still believed to be at the time) Um, as though he had every right to gaze so upon such a creature! And _then_, to have the madman defeat him-he, the Knave, Iracebeth's most fearsome warrior, and Hightopp, a jumped up…milliner! It was more than his pride could allow. And to see his eyes, the eyes of the one that should have killed him when he had the opportunity, looking up at him from _her_ face…

Well, he'd wanted him dead before. Now, he wanted him to die very, _very_ slowly.

Helen Kingsleigh stepped out of Alice's room at that moment, very nearly running into Stayne and finally interrupting his wild ruminations.

"I beg your pardon!" he said unctuously. "But your daughter Alice. How is she?"

It was easy for Stayne to see where Alice had gotten her looks from. Her mother's hair could have once been that bright honey, and her eyes were the same shade of blue. (_Had_ been the same shade of blue, something inside him snarled irritably.)

Holding herself with remarkable poise for a woman who'd just found a strange man in her house, Helen said, "She is fine, sir. Resting. I'm sorry if we've been previously introduced, but I do not recall your name?"

He did a short little bow before he remembered that it wasn't the necessary etiquette Aboveground to do so. "Theobald Masinson the third, madam. I was an associate of your late husband." The lie rolled easily off his tongue. "Alice and myself have just recently become reacquainted." (They do say the best lies are the ones that are closest to the truth, and the Knave was a _very_ good liar.)

Helen's face softened as she said, "You are the gentleman whom brought her to the house after she collapsed." Worry etched itself between her brows. "I told her she needed to postpone her plans, but-" she stopped speaking suddenly, as she realized she was making her daughter sound faulted in front of a seemingly eligible man who thought enough of her daughter to stay despite everyone else fleeing her party like rats from one of her trading ships. (Not to mention staying even after Alice was ill on him; heaven knew her own patience would have been tested.)

A loud crash was heard from inside Alice's room, and the two turned to stare at each other, then started for the door simultaneously. Stayne reached it first (no doubt due to his freakish stature) and shouldered past Helen to see Alice, in a nightdress, holding a hand mirror up to her face, staring at it in disbelief. (Being as he quite felt that way himself when first seeing her changed eyes, he could not blame her one wit.) His loud entry caused her to rip her eyes from the mirror unto him, and she made it exceedingly obvious to him that she was still able to see past his disguise. With the Hatter's eyes, it seemed she had gained his Sense of Perception.

"You!" she nearly shouted. Those green eyes darted around the room, looking for something to use as a weapon. She only found, of course, the things typical of a bed chamber: pillows, blankets, and the such. The ewer at her feet would have been useful to throw, but Alice was in a bit of a panic, and not having naturally violent tendencies (he could help her develop those, he mused), did not think to use it. Instead she settled for grasping the hand mirror with both hands and holding it in front of her as though it were the Vorpal Sword. He could see her muscles bunching and seizing due to her illness through her thin nightdress, but still she stood as tall as she could, hunching to hold the mirror as she was, and glared him down. She was thus poised for action (and what a wonderful sight it was, indeed, to the Knave!) when her mother entered into the room behind him.

Helen's desire to marry Alice off to any gentleman even remotely worthy (as this one, from their extremely short acquaintance, seemed to the woman to be) briefly overcame her own natural curiosity (as to why Alice would feel it necessary to arm herself against someone, and where she learned to stand in such a way-so unladylike. She certainly never taught her any such thing!) and sense of propriety, as she scolded Alice for preparing to attack what she thought of as the girl's rescuer.

"Alice, is that any way to treat such a fine man as this, who has put himself out mightily on your behalf? Put that mirror down _this instant_!"

Stunned, for Alice could not remember the last time her mother had raised her voice in such a manner (it was so unseemly) she did so, and started to sputter, "Mother, this _gentleman_…" She stopped as she realized the absolutely dangerous absurdity of her situation. There was no likelihood whatsoever that she would be believed if she told her mother the exact truth as to whom Stayne was; there was also the worse possibility (if one could consider anything worse than your family not believing you when you tell them the Absolute Truth) of what the Knave would do to her mother should the situation turn unfavorable for himself.

No, she could say nothing to warn her. Not presently, at least. She'd put her in enough danger just for the mere fact that Alice was her daughter. Alice had thought she had accepted the fact that Underland was real, and all of her adventures were true, but seeing her mother and Stayne standing side by side thus made her emotions reel about, as fast as a lobster practicing their quadrille. Smothering a hysterical giggle at the thought, Alice said the first correct thing she could call to mind. Something that was not a lie, something that her mother would understand, and hopefully react to immediately.

"I'm not properly dressed."

It was exactly the thing to say. Eyebrows raised, Helen seemed to _very_ briefly consider telling her daughter that she'd never concerned herself with such a thing before; but if this man was enough to finally, after all of these years, make Alice take a proper view on dressing and behavior, well…it was more than Hamish ever inspired in her, and that appeared to give her hope. She turned to the man she called Theobald and said, "She is correct, sir. I'm sorry, but I really must insist you quit the room. I appreciate your concern for her well-being, but she _is_ ill."

"Of course." Having been a member of Court long enough to recognize all of the implications of the neat little trap Alice had quickly laid for him (refuse, and he could count all of the connections he had made in this world as good as leaf-currency in the scandal that would follow; and he still needed to stay Above, no, he couldn't leave, not yet) he saw a tactical retreat was needed. Stayne nodded his head, then turned towards Alice and bowed at the neck. "I would like the opportunity to speak with you later, if I could, Miss Kingsleigh. We have several very important matters which we need to discuss."

"I will let you know when I am well enough to receive you," she replied. Theobald Masinson or Ilosovic Stayne, whichever he may be (for at this point Alice was beginning to think herself quite mad again) she had matters she would like to discuss with him, indeed. He went to exit, and paused in the doorway. "One thing, before I take my leave, Alice-" (if her mother was surprised at this familiarity, she hid it admirably) "I find that green unflatters you. I much prefer the blue." With that, he quit the room.

What was he-? Her eyes! Alice couldn't believe she had forgotten them, even for one moment!

"What could that man be speaking of?" her mother paused, puzzled. "Your nightdress is white." Muttering to herself, she continued, "Although it is impertinence itself to speak of your state of dress at all!"

"Mother, may I ask you something odd?"

A faint smile traced its way across Helen's features. After the day they had both had, and the scare Helen had felt when she'd seen her daughter prostrate in a stranger's arms, Alice was counting on her mother to indulge her in a little bit of whimsy.

"Yes, Alice?"

"What color would you say my eyes are?"

Looking startled despite herself, (was she rather expecting a question more along the lines of "have you ever imagined you could breathe under water?" or "what would you say if I were to order a large top-hat for myself to wear?"-that last question was one she had posed to her just last week, and Alice still remembered her mother's shudder at thinking of her child actually acting on such a thing) Helen responded, automatically, "Why, your eyes are blue."

"No, mother. Actually look at them," Alice said, forcefully, then softened her tone with, "Please?"

With great solemnity her mother gazed deep into her eyes for a few moments. Then Helen said, with absolute certainty, "Your eyes are blue, Alice."

Confusion blanketed Alice. She had seen her eyes green herself, and the Knave had said they were green as well. She held the hand mirror up to her face. Still green.

"Are you certain?"

"Yes, dear." Helen was starting to sound worried herself. "Why do you ask, if I may inquire?"

Alice was silent for so long that Helen thought perhaps she wasn't going to answer her. Finally she said, "It was just a curiosity, Mother."

Reaching up, Helen smoothed a few bits of Alice's rebellious hair back behind her ear. "It has been a long day for everyone. You should rest, and we can have a good discussion in the morning. Agreed?"

The very last thing Alice felt prepared for was sleeping. What if she had another dream?

It felt as though every time she slept, the line between Underland and London was thinner and thinner. As if she were more present there, than here. Those images of the two Queens, the confusion she had felt when she had last 'visited' the Hatter… (because a part of her knew that those were something, somehow, that had truly happened, and it felt almost wrong to call it a dream!) It frightened her, and she wished she could share her fears with someone, anyone.

She wanted to warn her mother of the Knave, as well, but how? Just what was he doing, Aboveground as he was? If his intention had been to come Above to kill her, he would have had ample opportunity before now. No, something was happening in Underland, and it seemed to involve her, again. For a moment she even wished she had the Oraculum by her side, so she could see clearly what Fate had in mind. For now, though, she had to muddle through. And part of that would mean talking with her mother in the morning. There was much to prepare. It seemed she was going to be using those traveling clothes Margaret had insisted upon after all.

"Of course, Mother," she agreed. "We will talk in the morning."


	7. Wishes at Cross Purposes

_See chapter one for full notes and disclaimer._

* * *

"If it is not our haberdasher, come back to us again. Tell me, how far did you go in your travels?"

The Hatter blinked slowly, squinting slightly against the light filtering into the dim room. A narrow bed, dusty walls, well-worn bed coverings…he was in the Mill House, then. But if he was here, where was _she_? (Back to a pronoun, part of his thoughts sighed.)

Turning his neck slowly (which felt horrendously awful, even to do just that small movement!) his gaze soon rested on the White Queen, looking very incongruous, sitting there in her shining gown and perfect hair on a chair at least two sizes too small for her in the generally unsplendorous surroundings.

Some part of him felt he should apologize, but for what, he wasn't certain, and doing things one was not certain of rarely led to good results. (The new place he found his mind leading him to with thoughts of _her_, now, was a good example. What were the use of thoughts, when the person they were applied to was not immediately available?)

"_She_?" he called, fighting the urge to call Alice out by her name. The girl would know he was speaking to her, certainly. He tried to roll his eyes around to see as best as possible without moving his head. Blonde hair sparkled just out of the line of his vision, but it was entirely the wrong shade. Buttermilk instead of honey. Still only the Queen instead of the _She_. "You called me away from _she,_" he said, when the memory came. Normally, he mused, such a thing would have made the Badness come; but tonight, (today?) only a swirling disappointment churned in the bottom of his stomach. So close, was he, to bringing her home, and then-

Light footsteps hit the floorboards, Mirana somehow able to walk across without them groaning, a feat no one else had ever been able to accomplish. (The House could be so touchy!) "That's four, then," he half-whispered.

"Four what?" Mallymkun's dry voice asked, as she finished pulling herself up on the bed via the quilt. "Four times you've almost died in the past night? _Scut_!" Picking her way across until she sat just under his chin, she drew her stickpin, waving it about as she spoke, becoming more and more hysteria-filled with each word.

"If you were going to drink that _shukm_ you should have just done it straight off! Not having everyone thinking that you'd chosen otherwise! Of all the _slurvish _things…" she flipped the stick pin around so the point was not out, and rapped the Hatter sharply on the end of the nose with the head. Glaring fiercely, she lifted her head as proudly as any Queen for a moment, after which she promptly burst into tears. Her tears didn't abate one bit with his response.

"Four impossible things, since last I slept. I do believe it's quite past breakfast, but perhaps just for today that will be fine? When one feels poorly, one can not expect to be held to the same standards as they are usually wont to."

Feeling a bit of mediation was in order, Mirana opened the door and called down the hall for Thackery to bring them all up some tea. Returning presently, she attempted to speak to the Hatter again, as he had never answered her first question. (A good policy being, she mused, that if you can't get what you want one way, get it another. If kindness doesn't work, try even more kindness.)

"Are you feeling better?"

To the Hatter, though, her voice was just a chirp. Chirp, chirp. The White Queen's voice had always sounded thus to him, bright, chirpy. No gravity to it. Which was just what you wanted in a monarch, because whomever chirped "Off with their heads!"? No one that he could recall. He did, however, hate chirping in a physician. It seemed as though all he ever got were the chirping kind. Although, he supposed, most physicians would have to be birds, in order to properly earn the title of Quack. (But in that same token, should they not be ducks? Oh that wouldn't do, though. They had tried that and all of the other birds put up such a fuss, and then the Cats got to wailing, and before you knew it, every creature in Underland wanted to be a healer. But the majority to finish the training? Chirping birds, like the White Queen.)

Just then noticing the Dormouse on his chest, the Hatter replied, "Mally! Whyever are you making that awful sound? Come now! The sleep was not so bad!" (He had figured out that he _had_ been asleep, at this point.) "Why, it felt as though if I had just held onto her hand, when I awoke, _she_ would have been here, lying beside me. Wouldn't that have been grand?"

Mallymkun reared back as though she had been slapped. Without a word, she backed up, and hopped down off the bed. Nearly running out of the room, she stopped briefly in the doorway, turned around, gave the Hatter a rather opaque look, and then left, just as Thackery was entering with the tea things.

"Leave?" he shouted. "More tea for me!"

"When you were asleep," Mirana said, "the March Hare told me," (here the Queen gave Thackery one of her rare put-upon half-smiles; it was not a full smile, nor yet a frown, because she didn't frown! It was clear 'told me' would have been phrased, by any other person, 'after many minutes of tedious unrelated discourse') "that you drank the Jabberwocky's vital fluid on the ninth day from the Frabjous Day. So you saw-?"

"The Knave!" Hatter interrupted, sitting upright in the bed, all traces of fatigue forgotten. The quilts that had been covering him twisted about his waist, and he fought against them for a moment as he tried to stand up.

"The Knave is Aboveground. _She_ told me he was present, in her London!"

Mirana rose herself, and touched the Hatter's shoulder, briefly. "Stay abed, Hatta. You were lucky to have survived the Jabber's wrath; please do not tempt Fate." As he slowly and reluctantly settled back onto the bed, his face still a study of determined impatience, the White Queen sat back down on the tiny chair, countenance serious. "Tell me everything you know, and saw, from the time you partook of the blood."

It was some time later when the Hatter's tale was finally finished. (He would occasionally lapse into different conversational subjects, and would need to be reminded to return to the topic of most interest.) Mirana became aware that she was perched on the edge of her seat, and forced herself to lean back. The smile was on her face again, but seemingly only out of the habit of being so, and not any real joy for the situation. When she spoke, her voice was sober. "What was your wish?"

At the Hatter's blank stare, she elaborated with, "When you took the blood, what were you thinking of? Wishing for?"

He blinked, slowly, deliberately. "I do not know."

Thackery spoke up, from where he had been sitting very quietly in the corner, startling them both. "He had yellow eyes, he did, when I came into the room. 'Twas in the midst of a fit. Off to Bath with 'em! His hair needs cutting, besides." The Hatter very possessively patted the hair about his head, frowning at Thackery as the Hare burst into hysterical giggles.

Mirana considered this, (presumably only the part about how the Hatter had been gripped by the Badness when partaking of the blood) then said, "Without knowing the exact wish, it is difficult to say what caused the dreams to occur."

When Tarrant made a noise of protest, Mirana held up a hand to kindly forestall him. "I only use the word _dream_ for lack of a better alternative, friend. However," she lowered her hand after it became clear the Hatter would allow her to continue speaking, "is it safe to say that the wish most likely pertained to having my Champion return to Underland?"

Feeling a fool for even admitting that much aloud, (although he shouldn't, because the whole of Underland already knew his feelings for the young woman, and had gossiped accordingly) the Hatter nodded. "That would be a safely accurate thing to say."

Nodding in confirmation, Mirana said, "The two wishes are at cross purposes, then. And with your wish coming from aged blood…it appears instead of returning Alice directly to Underland, as it should have, it is instead directing the both of you Somewhere Else, a realm under Dreaming's command." She shook her head, sadly, and continued with, "It will tear her in two."

"Two of _she_? That could be very useful!" Tarrant said, happily. "Why, one could stay Above and tend to her things that need doing and questions that need answering, and the other could be here and-"

"No, Tarrant." The White Queen used his name as she rarely had since Horunvendush Day. "Humans were not born to withstand constant dream travels to Somewhere Else. It will kill her. There will be no Alice at all."

Had there ever been a more horrible idea, the Hatter asked himself, then there being no Alice? Yes, he decided. One being that there would be no Alice because he himself caused there to not be one.

There was no warning when the Badness crashed into him. At one moment, he was himself, the Hatter, and the next there was only the need to rage, to destroy. Only there was no target for his ire this time save himself. So his hands went to his hair, his face, and began to scratch, and pull, and scrape-

"No!" Mirana cried, flying out of her chair. "Hatter! _Tarrant_!" she said desperately as she tried to pull his hands away from their self-destructive aim. "Get Mallymkun, Thackery!"

The March Hare was saying, over and over, "Shouldna said her name, shouldna said her name…" and not attending a bit to what the Queen had said, so she herself, (although she despised raised voices) shouted, "_Mallymkun_!"

The Dormouse was in the room the next instant, obviously already having been either drawn to the sudden cacophony or having been sitting right outside the door the entire time. She ran up the side of the bed's nightstand (as she could not risk getting on the bed with the way the Hatter was thrashing about) , stood on her haunches and said, in the most imperious voice she could command, "HATTER!"

It worked, though barely. He stopped the pulling and the scratching and sat there, breathing heavily for several moments, face held by his hands. Then he said, in a voice choked with emotion, "I'm fine. Although a person who deserves less to be there could not exist. I have endangered _she_ most unforgivably." He lowered his hands, and his companions could see the damage he had wrought to himself.

"Oh, Hatter," Mallymkun said, voice broken. One eye was in the process of completely swelling shut; on the opposite eye, there only remained one half of a formerly extravagant eyebrow. Long gouges ran the length of both cheeks, and his lips were split and bleeding profusely.

A tube full of sludge-like green liquid was shoved under his nose, and he looked up to see Mirana staring at him, not even a half-not-really-smile on her face.

"I don't want that. It will clear my head," the Hatter lisped, his speech slurring more due to his new abrasions.

A steely glint entered the Queen's eyes. "I have concerns awaiting me besides your well-being, even as important as I find wishing you well to be." She then forced the tube into his mouth and upended its contents. He gagged, swallowed, and then glared at her from under his brows as he felt his cuts rapidly healing. "Was that necessary?" he griped.

"Yes," was the reply. "You have told me the Knave of Hearts is Above, in London?" The Hatter nodded affirmatively, and then the White Queen continued, "What would you say if I told you Iracebeth of Crims was currently in Marmoreal?"

A level of sanity she had not seen in Tarrant for years entered his eyes. "I would say we should ride, and make haste for the White Castle. Iracebeth there and the Knave Above? Not Coincidence's doing, I shouldn't think."

"No indeed," Mirana agreed. She stood, and motioned for the other two occupants of the room to follow her as she went to exit. "Please get dressed, Hatter. We need to leave for Marmoreal immediately. We dare not wait for morning."


	8. In A Gadda Da Vida

_*See chapter one for full notes and disclaimer.**  
**_

* * *

_She stepped through the garden, the wilted blades of grass shivering and shrinking away from her feet. The flowers bowed down low as she walked, faces flat into the dirt. She turned back, and the flowers stayed down, prostrate, as if terrified to straighten themselves. The sky was so darkly grey-blue with clouds it seemed as if the sun hadn't reached the ground in months. Withered leaves crunching under her weight were the only sound to be heard. There were no crickets, no happy yet clumsy fumble-bees, nothing._

"_Come along, my dear," a voice called out ahead. Relieved to be hearing any sound at all not caused by herself in this shadow of the White Queen's garden, Alice ran to it. _

_The Knave was waiting for her just ahead in the path; he held out his hand without looking to see if she was even there. Alice took it, internally fighting the need to do so, but she had no control over the action. She was able to look up at him a bit, and she saw him smiling at her with a fond familiarity. _

"_Is it not a lovely world we have created, dearest?" he asked, gesturing to the grounds surrounding them. "These flowers will never dare mock you again. Although I still don't know why you did not allow me to simply cut them all down…"_

_Alice said nothing; her throat would not form the words of horror she wanted it to, when presented with such an idea. Stayne evidently took her silence differently._

"_Ah, now don't be cross with me, sweetness," he said hastily. "We'll keep your silly flowers. I suppose it is better for all to have as many reminders of your Glory as possible. In one form, or another." He stopped walking and looked upward, smiling as he sighed contentedly. Alice knew she would not want to see whatever it was that made a man such as he sigh so, but her eyes followed his gaze up, and up, and up…_

_To see nearly every creature she had ever counted as a friend in Underland strung amongst the vines of an ancient rosebush. The rose at the center of the tangle itself was asleep; Alice just wished she could convince herself that her friends shared a similar state of being, but she knew death when she saw it. Indeed, there could be no mistaking it. They were all lined up, a macabre parade of rose-bush scarecrows, placed into varying positions that mocked their attitudes in life. _

_There McTwisp held a pocket-watch in his paw, the bony joints clasping it possessively; and there the White Queen was holding her arm aloft, reminding Alice of when she was in her kitchen, preparing an elixir to fix her height-and then there…_

_**No no no no no** a part of her mind chanted, but of course that didn't change anything; it still was. _

_The flesh had melted away from his face in some spots, but the wiry hair sticking out from under the ever-familiar top hat was the same as ever. The fingers that she had last felt tracing their way across her lips, beautiful even in their damaged state, were now only held together with shredded bits of fetid skin. _

"_A lovely world indeed," Stayne repeated, his tone ringing with the satisfaction of a job well done._

_The Hatter's head snapped up at her in a sudden movement, and if she'd been able to shriek she would have, muchness aside. His brilliant green orbs were not in place; there were just two sunken holes where they should have been. _

"_Bloody Big Head be not the only danger herein," his formerly lisping, almost musical voice hissed, a mockery of itself. It was then and only then that Alice felt control of her body return to herself. She took full advantage by closing her eyes tight as she screamed, and screamed, and-_

"Alice!"

A voice was calling her.

"Alice, please!"

It sounded as though it had been calling her for a little while, now, as it took on a desperate edge. Alice stopped screaming, her throat sore and aching almost immediately. Cautiously opening her eyes the merest fraction, she saw a large expanse of nothing-just a swirling light purple mist amongst darkness. Recognizing it as the dream-space where she had met with the Hatter the last two times she slept, she opened her eyes a bit more (though they were still only slit).

Bandaged and be-thimbled hands were outstretched towards her, hands that led up to lacy cuffs (a dashing turquoise) and patchy velveteen sleeves, all together seeming to say: I'd like to hold you, but I'm afraid. She followed those patched velveteen sleeves upwards until she reached his face, in full. It was as complete and healthy as it ever was, not a bit of that limiting rigor mortise in sight.

"Hatter!" she croaked as cold shivers began to wrack her body. Wrapping her arms about herself, Alice almost bit her tongue as she continued with, "I'm fine." The lie was obvious from the way she stood, the haunted look in her eyes.

Eyes that suspiciously looked a lot like the Hatter's.

It had been a few years (he thought) since he had last seen his own eyes. It had been a few years since he had seen a mirror, period. He'd barely left the tea-table to even visit the necessary room towards the end of their wait for Alice's return. Mallymkun had seen to his grooming-haircuts, shaving and the such. (Which likely explained the rather bushy quality of said hair, the Dormouse being a much better fighter than barber.) He knew, though, that the color now contained within Alice's irises was his own green. The how and the why of such a situation would have to wait, though. _She_ had begun giggling, softly.

"It seems we've switched places for a bit, Hatter," she said. "Should this not be the opposite? Me calling to you and you assuring me that you are fine?"

He stood awkwardly for a moment, his arms still outstretched, fighting the urge to walk to her and pull her close.

"Alice?" he finally said, for lack of anything else to say. (Which for him was quite amazing indeed!) He walked towards her, slowly, as one would approach a lightning bug one hoped to catch without being shocked. "Could you tell me…why are you wearing my eyes?"

A small furrow appeared between her brows. "Wearing your-? Oh." she was silent for so long, the Hatter began to think that would be his entire reply, until she finally said, "I was hoping you would be able to tell me. They…turned, after the last time I was here. Not immediately. It w-was" Alice began to lose the fight with her chills, as her teeth began to chatter when she spoke, "during my t-tea party. I w-was ill, a-and…I fell asleep, and…oh! My dreams…they're so awful, Hatter! I don't know that I can have even one more!"

At this, Tarrant withdrew a bit, one shoulder half turning away from her. "Including the dreams of me?" he queried. His entire countenance was of one preparing for rejection; even his bow-tie had crawled to the inside of his suit, seeking shelter.

She was silent for several moments again. That handful of moments the Hatter would count amongst the worst of his existence, and he had rather unfortunately quite a few dreadful moments to chose from.

"No," she said, when she did speak again. The frozen feeling that had built up within him (Winter concentrated fully in his abdomen would have been pleasant, comparatively, he mused) released from his chest completely with her next words. "These dreams, here with you, are the only thing that makes the others bearable at all."

He didn't know what dreams she was referring to; yet still he straightened, his clothes becoming brighter and crisper. Staring at her for a moment as if weighing the veracity of her statement, he waited barely a wink of Time's eye after that before he closed the final distance between them, and pulled her to himself. She was stiff and still in his arms, until he said, in a voice trembling and heavily lisping, "W-whatever dreams may come for you, Alice…I'll be here, waiting for you, on the other side of them. Just remember that."

At that, she collapsed into his embrace, sobs shaking her small shoulders. This wasn't like his Alice at all, acting so decidedly frightened, and he didn't like that _at_ _all_, but oh, holding her felt so nice. Useful. Needful. So he stood and stroked her hair, murmuring even more-nonsensical bits of nonsense than usual into her ear until her tears abated.

"Now tell me, please…" he said, when all that was left to her was the sniffles, "what dreams these are that you speak of?"

* * *

"My sister is many things. Cordial. Naïve…." Iracebeth said, struggling to describe Mirana with terms that could be construed as polite, but would not bolster the listener's currently positive opinion of her, "but practical, she is not." Eyes slanted slyly, she asked, "Tell me-how often do you speak with the trees and flowers here?" Her stump itched, and oh! How she missed the use of both of her hands.

The man to whom she spoke, a courtier in the White Queen's court (whom was wearing what looked to be a devilishly uncomfortable pair of tight breeches and had more ruffles in his jabot than was healthy) said, "Daily." The eye roll that should have accompanied the dryness of that one word was not present, but could be heard in his voice, nonetheless.

"I thought so. That is very like Mirana." The tone Iracebeth used was not complimentary.

"Tell me…" she said, slowly, as if just discovering a very important thought to ponder, "when was the last time you were served meat at a meal?"

A sharp intake of breath told Iracebeth she'd hit the hedgehog through the arch with this statement.

"Some time before Horunvendush Day," the man whispered. "Oh, but I would…" He stopped, collected himself visibly, then said, "I would never eat a living creature, milady! It is the practice of this court to only eat plant matter and animal fluids that have been willingly provided by the creature in question-or ones that have never had sentience."

Iracebeth graced him with a simpering pout. "Of course. I was just making idle conversation."

"Yes, well…Her Majesty did say she would try once again to cultivate a sausage tree, but after the last…incident…" here the man coughed, delicately, with his eyebrows raised. Iracebeth was intrigued.

"Incident?"

Flustered, the man hastily added, "Well, she's been understandably reluctant to begin experimentation again after such a creation. We are all contentment itself, with all aspects of the White Queen's rule."

"As is all of Underland," Iracebeth added, ironically. (She still wished to hear more of this 'mistake' that her sister had made, but she must hold true to her main objective, and not be distracted by idle gossip.)

"Just so," he nodded, and started to walk away. Half-way through his righteous stroll, though, he paused and looked over his shoulder, just as the former Red Queen knew he would. She wore a smile, a huge, vapid one, and waved airily at him. His head whipped back around and he walked faster, embarrassed at having shown his hand in such a manner.

A grin curled up at the sides of Iracebeth's mouth. "Mother was right about one thing, then," she purred. "The way to most men's loyalty _is_ through their gullet."

A brief shadow flickered across her face, as the Queen wished that 'most' was totally inclusive to 'all'. If that were so, she would not be in this situation. Mirana would have her Court and Iracebeth would have her own, her King at her side... Eyes flashing, Iracebeth refocused the blame back to the one with whom it belonged. If Mirana had simply kept her hands and other…things…to herself!

But no. Her sister had needed to prove that the one thing, the single thing she most excelled at (besides ruling her portion of Underland) was not enough to keep her King's attentions to herself. Mirana had the ability to make any and all love her with just a bat of those ridiculous eyes of hers; Iracebeth's strength lay in her tarts.

Iracebeth was prodigiously proud of her tarts. When she baked them, she herself saw to every aspect of their creation. She'd pick the squimberries, carefully roll out the crust, weigh and boil the berries and sugar, all herself. It calmed her considerable temper and filled her with peace at the knowledge that _this..._this was something she was good at. Nay, that she excelled at, with tangible results.

Her husband, the Red King, used to adore eat her tarts. While he ate, his whole face would alight in a smile, and he'd declare, "None can compare to this wife of mine!" while she would bask in the warmth of his praise. That was, he did until the day her sister decided to challenge his declaration. Soon, there were no smiles, no warmth-filling announcements. Just Iracebeth, sitting alone in her kitchen, with trays and trays of uneaten tarts.

If Mirana had not felt the need to prove to her that she could make any one in all of Underland love her, then things would be different. The Queens would support each other, as they were always meant to do. As she had told that Alice girl, years ago, when she was briefly a Queen herself. (Alice, another creature her sister stole from her! Was she not even able to have a pet that did not love the younger woman more?)

She'd had only one option. It was not one she relished, but it was the only one that her pride allowed. So she'd ordered his execution.

The morning after the deed was done, and indeed, for every morning following, before any Court business was seen to, before any petitions were heard, or decisions made, she would go to her kitchen and bake. She churned tarts out at a furious pace, but none were allowed to taste her pastries. They were the one thing her people truly loved from her, so it was the one thing she would deny them. She'd learnt her lesson. When you shared the best of yourself, people would eat all of it they could, and then walk away. They'd be full, and happy, peaceful with themselves, and you would be left with nothing but their crumbs.

She had thought that perhaps Stayne was different, but that was not to be. His actions on the Frabjous Day disproved her of that, her last fantasy. She would now live for herself, as she always should have done. If he returned as they had discussed, she would take him as her King, yes-but she would expect nothing from him. No gentleness, no affection, and certainly no love. It would be better that way.

Everything would be better, especially Underland, without her sister there, as well. For Iracebeth, it could hardly get worse.


	9. A Decision is Made

_See chapter one for full notes and disclaimer._

* * *

When Alice awoke she felt steadier in countenance, if not in truth. Her limbs felt leaden with exhaustion, as though she had not slept at all, and that itself was a form of truth, she supposed. She and the Hatter had remained, through mutual decision, in that blank stretch of mist for as long as possible as they had much to discuss. Her eyes being one of the topics (of which neither one of them had satisfactory answers, so it was agreed that subject would be put aside until either had anything of a useful nature to share) and, just as importantly for Alice, the how and why of their being in the swirling mist to begin with.

"Please do not think that I do not enjoy your company…" she had hedged, when bringing the subject up- (They had just previously been in a lively discourse over adding of different substances to tea; the Hatter being of the opinion of the more variety, the better-while Alice believed a good cup of tea could stand on its own without too many things added. What more did one need than cream and sugar? The Hatter's lips had curled in a half-smile, almost dare she say it, a smirk-as he said in a rolling burr that "A great many things improved with variety"-after which he flushed so mightily and immediately dropped his gaze to his thread-spools in such a way as made Alice think that perhaps this once, her curiosity would be better left unsatisfied.) "however, do you know…how we came to be here? Once I could say was a rather singularly realistic dream."

Here she blushed herself, at the memory of what occurred during that first visit. Each very carefully did not look at the other. Determined, Alice continued with, "During the second visit, though, it became apparent to me that these visits were mutually occurring. And this being the third…"

"Three is a lovely number, but four is especially lovelier." the Hatter said, pulling his top-hat off and putting it to rights: adjusting the clan-identification card, tightening the sash wound around it, brushing imaginary dust off of its flat topped surface. "That is to say, it is my fault."

"Your fault?" Alice had asked. "Are you telling me you wished for this to happen or something of the like?" She had said the question with an air of disbelief, but immediately felt contrite when the Hatter very firmly stared down at his lap, all nervous actions gone. (They had, after the first hour of being in the purple fog, risked sitting down, the reasoning being if they were able to stand without seeing where their feet rested, then surely the same principle must hold true for their bottoms? Just in case, though, the Hatter had insisted on being the first to sit, and he took a mischievous joy in pretending to fall through into nothingness. That is until he realized the full depth of Alice's panic at such an Idea, after which he sat upright abruptly and began apologizing profusely. That was one Idea, he decided, that should have been immediately placed in the Unused Jar.)

In fact, he hardly moved at all. His eyes were wide, unseeing of anything there, it seemed. "Hatter?" she said, gently, and he blinked twice, hard. Then he said, "I'm fine. That is, yes." He firmly placed the top hat back on his head, as if this proved his assertion.

Alice could only assume he was answering her question, but she wanted to be sure. She disliked being incorrect in an assumption. "You…wished for us to come here?"

The Hatter heaved a great sigh, then turned and looked at Alice fully in the eyes. (He felt a small start, as he had this entire visit, at seeing her eyes so un-Alice-like, but firmly shoved that aside To Be Thought On Later.) "Not per se, this exactness. The wish was…" he looked away. He'd thought at first it'd be easier to admit to her, perhaps less embarrassing, if he was looking into her eyes, but that wouldn't do, as she didn't have her eyes, she had his eyes, and he was always rubbish at facing himself. "I wished for a great many things, but the uppermost was to see you, in any way, at all, again. I believe."

Unconsciously scooting a bit closer to him, where they sat on the ground, Alice reached with one hand and touched the far side of his face, gently. Just the tips of her fingers brushing along the jaw-line, but it was enough to make him shake. "You believe?" she said, softly.

Oh, he didn't want to have to admit the full depth of his madness to her, not in this place that seemed made just for the two of them, not while she was _touching_ him...but what else was there for him to do? She deserved nothing less than full disclosure.

"The…Badness…came upon me. I do not recall exactly what it was that I wished for, when I drank the Jabber down."

Her fingers left his face, abruptly, and he winced, very slightly, though he had told himself he would do no such thing if that were to be her reaction. She spoke, and that meant that she hadn't left altogether, so it would be alright then, wouldn't it? Her voice was sharp with disbelief. "You wished with Jabberwocky blood?"

He nodded. Alice's hand more firmly returned to his face, the whole of it stroking the side, fingers on his brow bone, palm against his cheek. "You could have wished for anything. Anything you truly wanted."

"Aye." had been his reply.

"And you wished for me?" She felt very strange at the idea that he would do such a thing. It was definitely not unhappy, and…something agreeably twisted at the bottom of her stomach, and her breath came shorter than it should, and she just felt so…humbled. Yes, that was it. She felt humbled that the Hatter would feel such a depth of emotion for someone like her, just a silly little girl who didn't even know if she was dreaming or not the majority of the time she had conversed with him!

"Aye." he said, again, still not meeting her eyes.

There was no thought to her next action. She'd already been thinking of it incessantly, in the moments she had between thinking of all the other things that had been demanding her attention. It had always been there, like a sore tooth. It throbbed and it ached and you went about your day, but it still pulsed there, an undeniable presence. So this needed no thought at all. She was just so gratified at his attentions, and so curious, despite the undercurrents of guilt that nipped at her for even entertaining such emotions-so she closed the rest of the distance between them, and after carefully removing his top hat and setting it upon the ephemeral ground, kissed him.

It took the Hatter several heartbeats before his mind and body caught on to Alice's actions. When they did, though, he pulled her tighter to himself, and pressed her mouth more firmly to his own. It was everything he could have wanted it to be: glowing and warm and pleasant and all those other positive adjectives and he didn't want her to stop please Alice don't stop and-

She broke away with a gasp. "Stop, please." she breathed, and he must have made some needy sound (as if he didn't feel emasculated enough, what with her wanting to…do _that_, and then with the not wanting to do _that_!) because she said, "I'm sorry. I just…I don't even know what I'm apologizing for!" Her voice was frustration itself. "Do you see?"

And he did see. Shame (such an inconvenient fellow!) filled him, from the bottom up. "I should apologize to you. I never-"

She placed her hands over his, just when he was going to lift them up to properly demonstrate his remonstration. "Let's just…not speak of it?" For Alice, that was what you did with these things, these confusing and tempting and _wonderful _things-they were just not spoken of. To speak would break the magic, she felt, or somehow cheapen what was, and she wanted neither.

"Of course," Hatter said, though there was nothing less he wished to do. "Cessation of conversation concerning all prior activities shall commence…now-ish."

Smiling then, that same sad, sweet smile she had given him just before evaporating for the first time, with her own vial of Jabberwocky blood, said, "It's almost morning, besides.. I will see you tomorrow night?"

Without waiting for an answer, she began fading, becoming nothing more than wisps of smoke within moments. "Wait!" he called, but it was too late. She was gone, and he had been so involved in all of their Conversations on Important Things that he had not told her the most important things of all. He'd not told her what the cost of traveling here, to Somewhere Else, would cost her, if repeated nightly, as it seemed she would be, with them not having control over it.

He hadn't been able to tell her that his foolishness, the very wish she kissed him for having, might kill her.

* * *

But because Hatter had not been able to tell Alice this, she was unaware of that dire possibility, so when she did awake, she was as described before: a bit steadier, a bit clearer-headed. She rose, and after her morning ablutions, immediately set to writing Stayne (for she had firmed that in her mind, that it was indeed he, and she was not going mad for thinking so!) a brief note, telling him to visit her residence at his earliest possible convenience. She dusted it, and immediately set it in the hand of a footman, with instructions it was to be delivered immediately.

Alice was not sure (as neither had been the Hatter) if her illness would improve on its own, with it having every appearance of being an Underlandian condition; the Hatter's revelation that he was the cause of it, (although the Hatter did not come out and say, "I drank the Jabberwocky blood, and it's making you ill, with all of its pulling you about" Alice was, despite appearances, a rather intelligent girl, and was able to piece that together.) put paid to that. Alice saw one path before her. She needed to return to Underland.

There would be no cure for her here in the Aboveground for a problem plaguing her due to an Underlandian concoction. (Ingested by another, no less!) Hence the letter to Stayne; she doubted he had come to Above through a rabbit-hole. Alice wanted to know how he had traveled there, and hopefully, get some information from him on what her dreams could refer to. (Even though, after the first dream she'd had last night, the last person at all, anywhere, that she wished to see was Stayne, she knew this was her most practical of options.)

Her main concern was what she was going to tell her mother. She didn't wish to lie to her but saw no possible way she could reveal the truth. ("Mother, dear, I'm just popping off to another world that I've previously accessed through a rabbit-hole. You remember Hamish's proposal, certainly? And I'm not sure when I'll be back, so don't hold supper for me, hmm?" Yes, that would go over splendidly.) The thought did niggle at her that perhaps she needn't tell her anything at all; when she had gone to Underland previously, it appeared as though hardly any time had passed here in the Above...but things were so topsy-turvy there, she was not willing to place any wagers that it was constantly that way.

When she reached the bottom of the stair, a servant was waiting with a small stack of correspondence in hand. "Miss Kingsleigh, letters for you, miss," she curtsied, before handing them off and scurrying away. It had been some time since she had letters of any sort that were not business, so why-?

She saw with a bit of surprise that they were all from gentlemen whom had attended her party the day before, each of them pledging support for her new venture to Jakarta! She opened one after the other with growing haste, joy alighting her features. At the very bottom of the stack was an informal missive from Lord Ascot, where he wryly (for she could tell his emotions from the slant of his figures) informed her that her being ill so violently actually convinced them that she would be a safe investment; for if she was willing to host such an event while so unwell, and was so determined to see it through, they believed she could do no less for a business venture so dear to her heart.

It was wondrous news, truly, but she did not know what to think, or feel of it, now that she knew she had to return to Underland, and did not know when she may be able to return. She tucked the letters in the pocket of her skirt, and walked into her mother's less formal parlor, where she was taking breakfast for the day. "Hello, mother."

"Alice!" her mother smiled. "How are you feeling today? Better, I hope?"

"Yes, quite," Alice said. She smiled, and she knew it had a nervous edge, but there was nothing to be done for it. Best be out with it, then, and have it said. "Mother, we need to have a discussion. May I sit down?"


	10. Discussing Underland

_See chapter one for full notes and disclaimer._ _I am still not entirely pleased with the POV shifts in this chapter, but it is what it is._**  
**

* * *

When Alice had returned from Underland she had been prepared to think it all a fancy dream. After all, it wasn't as though London teemed with sardonically grinning cats, wise smoking caterpillars and waistcoat wearing rabbits. How wonderful it would be if it did, but it did not.

The evening of Hamish's proposal, Alice and her mother had retired to their respective rooms within Ascot Manor (as Alice had stayed quite late discussing business propositions, and despite what he knew his wife would say on the manner, Ascot had offered them a place to stay for the night. He was a gentleman, even when his wife refused to act like a lady) and she'd dismissed her maid, not wanting the fuss of dealing with the woman's shock at her dirty attire. She was too exhausted from the day's events to assuage yet another's disappropriation on her state.

In fact, Alice felt bone-jarringly sore, almost as if she had…but that was to be expected, she told herself firmly. Falling the way she had down into that hole would be enough to make any body ache.

It was when she was removing her skirts that her state of denial began to be stripped away. Her dress was missing a large strip of fabric from its underskirt…the very item she'd taken to clothe herself in her new size in the Room of Doors. (Alice scoffed a bit at herself for the niggling doubt, as well as for using seemingly Random Capitalization, even in her thoughts, but that Room seemed to deserve said Capitalization, for the sheer scope of its Oddity.)

She began picking over the rest of her attire. The strip seemed to be the only bit of her dress that was missing, but where were her gloves? Whenever had she misplaced those? Unless she had really used them to wrap her feet…

"Stuff and nonsense," she'd whispered, without any real heat behind it. (She did love chastising herself, and this seemed like a good opportunity to do so.) Checking her pockets one last time (as her dress had some rather cleverly hidden within the skirt's folds) she found not her gloves, but a small glass bottle. The tag was ragged and faded, as though it were decades old, instead of just days, as she knew it to be. 'Drink Me' it read.

At this, her purposeful denial of Underland was banished. She had proof-actual, physical proof-that it existed. She'd tucked the bottle away in the safest place she knew (a hollow book in her father's library) and left it there when she went to China. With her father gone, no one in her family save herself read the books that were in there, and in fact even the maids rarely ventured into the room.

So Alice understood why her mother refused to believe her when she finally told her of Underland. (If she didn't even believe it at first, and she having lived it, what did she expect of her mother?) It did not mean that she appreciated the level of her vehemence the woman displayed.

Alice sat in the chair opposite Helen, the table between them laden with untouched breakfast foods. Eying a scone even as her mother almost shouted at her (her voice was raised, hysterically, but not quite at that decibel at which one can accurately say is a shout), Alice wondered if she would be able to eat one as her mother talked, or if that would just increase her ire.

"Open your eyes, child! This...this_ fantasy_, this pretty little adventure story you've spun me, is impossible!"

There was nothing Alice liked less than being told something was an impossibility. (It was even worse than being told one was unimaginative.)

"Why can it not? You never having heard of such a place or such things does not make them any less real," she said, before continuing, in a conspiratorial tone, "You know the thing no one tells you, of adventure stories? While they're terribly exciting on paper, read while safe in bed, or while told to you, as I have today, inside a rational room with a comforting fire…when they're actually experienced, they are much more terrifying than exhilarating." She sighed. "And I was terrified, mother. But I need to go back."

"Go back?" her mother's voice was aghast.

"Yes." Deciding that, scone or no scone, her mother was going to be upset, Alice plucked up one riddled with dried cranberries and began munching it. "It's why I've told you of it now, you see." she said, after swallowing. (Rebellious she may be, but she was not going to talk to her mother with her mouth full!) "Something occurred there that has made me ill here. The only way to make things right is by going back."

"There is nothing to go back to!" her mother cried. "I knew I shouldn't have allowed Charles to encourage your flights of fancy! You've gone mad!"

Shrugging, Alice said, "Yes, probably. Father never seemed to take issue with it, though." She took another bite. "In fact, he considered it one of my best qualities."

"I will not accept that, Alice." her mother's voice shook, and Alice felt a pang for the woman. It _was_ terribly difficult to believe, even if one possessed a fertile imagination, which her poor mother did not.

"What you are telling me is nothing more than a story that you believe due to an overwrought imagination. Traveling through the Orient no doubt did not help." Helen closed her eyes, as though gathering her strength. "I blame myself," she murmured. "I should have put a stop to all this nonsense long ago."

A sudden fury welled inside of Alice. "There was nothing for you to put a stop to! I do not know how or why I fell into the rabbit hole the first time, but there was nothing you could have done. Have you never believed there is more to the world than what you can easily see?"

Tears pricked the elder woman's eyes. Alice could almost hear her mother's thought processes: at first, when her daughter had begun to speak of her 'adventures', she'd thought the girl was laughing into her sleeve at her. The more she spoke, though, Alice could see she realized her daughter was perfectly serious. There were only two options her mother would prescribe for what she described. Either her youngest had gone completely round the bend (which to Helen would be horrible enough to contemplate) or, even worse…she was telling the complete truth.

Terrible as it was, Alice wondered if her mother didn't hope she was simply mad.

Voice a whisper, Helen finally responded by saying, "It is a very pretty adventure story, as you said, my darling. Yet it is still a story. Dear, you are still ill…perhaps if you laid down, rested…?"

"Mother, as marvelous as that sounds," (for truth be told, Alice was still weak and shaky, and would have enjoyed a good nap, despite having just awakened) "I have no time to rest. I didn't want to speak of Underland to you at all, but…I feel if I do not return there, something terrible will happen."

Her mother's face had frozen halfway through her statement. "What did you call this place, the place of your dreams?"

"Underland," Alice repeated, puzzled as to why that would be of more concern than anything else she'd previously said. The whites of her mother's eyes were very large, reminding Alice of a startled horse. Her father had owned one that would get just that expression right before it bucked its rider.

"No," Helen breathed, and her daughter saw, for whatever reason, a glimmer of belief trace its way across her face. " 'Twas a story, nothing more than a story, to frighten the village children into behaving."

* * *

She may have looked and acted as the proper English wife of a wealthy aristocrat, but Helen Kingsleigh had not always been so. She'd grown up as Helen McTavish, the third daughter of a well-intentioned but uninspiring Scotch gentleman of little means. The fact that her Charles had married her at all, with she being considered unsuitable for his rank and station, only added to his air of mystery and functional madness. Grateful that he'd looked past her inauspicious birth, she'd worked hard to mold herself into the wife she felt Charles deserved: prim, proper, and always polished.

In her youth, though, before Charles, before she'd carefully crafted her veneer of gentility, she'd sat with all the other children of her village, and listened to the washing women, or the maids, or whomever they could bribe into doing it, as they told them stories of the land Under the hills, where the Wee Folk lived.

How she loved those stories as a child! There were dashing heroes, distressed ladies, and sometimes courageous animals. In some the hero would get away from the Wee Folk, while in yet others they were forced to live Underground, as punishment for a simple mistake they'd made while adventuring there. A flower picked that should not have been, a kiss stolen from the daughter of the wrong creature…

Alice knew nothing of Helen's thoughts, but seemed to recall something if the sudden tilt of her head was any indication. "I have proof."

Helen's watery eyes looked back up at her daughter. "Proof?" she echoed, weakly.

"Yes." Excitement shone in her eyes. "Allow me a moment to fetch it, mother." Dropping the scone she'd been picking at, Alice bounded out of the chair and was out of the room before she could form a reply.

When Alice returned, she clutched a small bottle in her fist. "I found this in my dress pockets after I returned from Underland, this last time." Her fist unclenched to reveal a tiny aged bottle. There was a wilted tag clearly visible, the strange script scrawled across it reading 'Drink Me'.

Helen began to shake, as her own thoughts echoed back through her skull. _A simple mistake made while adventuring…_

"You drank the wine?" she asked, amazed at how small her voice sounded, even to herself.

"Mother?" Alice sounded confused. "Of course I did. It was the only way I could shrink to get through the Door."

"And then you ate their food." This wasn't a question. She knew if Alice had drank, then she must have...

"Yes, I had some Upelkuchen cake to make me grow…and then the White Queen gave me an elixir to fix my height properly…and then, well, I was hungry, and the March Hare had made this delicious soup…" she trailed off as Helen began to sway in her seat.

A footman entered the room, tugging the points of his waistcoat down in a vaguely nervous gesture. "Madame Kingsleigh," he bowed to the matriarch. "Miss Kingsleigh," he respectfully inclined his head towards Alice, "there is a gentleman come to call for you."

"Please give him our regrets, but we are unable to receive him at this time." Helen said, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbing her face with it. The man nodded and went to leave the room, but stopped when Alice said, "Wait. What is the gentleman's name?"

"Mister Theobald Masinson, miss."

Alice's gentleman caller. Perhaps his presence would lend some air of sanity to the proceedings, Helen thought, unaware of exactly how wrong such a presumption would prove to be.

* * *

Stayne had arrived, then. Promptly, too. Alice shoved aside the revulsion she still felt from the previous night's dream, and said, "Please, send him in."

"Very good, miss." The footman hurriedly bowed and left the room, before either woman could recall him with another change of directions.

Alice turned to her mother, concerned determination upon her brow. There was much more she had wished to tell her before Stayne called upon them, but now there was no time. Helen looked unwell, face drawn and eyes lost, much as she had when Alice's father had died.

The thudding of footsteps was heard, and Stayne entered the room without a further announcement. "You've summoned me and I have arrived, my Lady." He smarmily kneeled, only to stand up abruptly when he noticed Alice's mother was in the room as well. "Mrs. Kingsleigh!" he cried, and went to grasp her hands, when Alice's voice cut sharply, stopping him in his tracks.

"Do not touch my mother, Knave." She spoke bravely, but seeing him again, as he truly was (for she could see clearly past his disguise) Alice felt as frightened as she had when she had snuck into the Bandersnatch's kennel. (It was a what-have-I-done-I'm-so-foolish fear.)

She turned to Helen. "Mother, I would _not_ like for you to meet Ilosovic Stayne, Knave to the Red Queen. However, he's here now, so there's no help for it, I'm afraid."

Bewildered, the woman replied, "Alice, this is Mr. Masinson. I made his acquaintance yesterday, after you were ill at the party."

"This man is no more Theodore Masinson than I myself," Alice snorted. Eyes slanted back at Stayne, she asked, "Why can my mother not see you for what you truly are? I can see you, clear as day. All seven feet of you."

"You can hardly see _all _seven feet of me, my dear, but if that is truly your desire, it can be arranged." At Helen's strangled gasp of outrage, Stayne quickly added (as sometimes it was best to just charge on, and act as if the words that had sprung from your mouth had not, in fact, done so), "She can not see me because I've changed the Perception around myself."

If looks could kill, Stayne would have been rotting in his chair. Alice let his crude statement slide, however, in the interest of getting more information out of him. That was the purpose of having him in her home, after all. "Then why am I able to…Perceive you?"

Surprisingly, it was Helen who answered, not Stayne. "You drank the wine, ate their food. You'll be able to see beyond their glamourie."

"You are an extraordinary creature, madam." Stayne said, a bit of awe in his voice. "I believe that is partly the cause of Alice's gained Perception. For one such as yourself to understand that is unusual indeed."

He turned back to Alice. "I have no definite answers for you, your Ladyship. It is as I said to your Mother, that partaking of our foodstuffs may have had an effect. I do believe however that the Jabber blood is partly the cause, as well."

"How do you know of that?"

The sharpness of her tone was not flattering to himself at all. Stayne rather liked it better when she was Umm, and at least a bit more respectful, if not as willing as he would have her be. "All of Underland knows you defeated the Jabberwocky and drank its blood to return here." (Although why one would waste a Jabber gift on returning to this depressing spot of blight was anyone's guess. Alice may truly be mad, after all, he mused.) "There are already bloody songs about it!"

The young woman's body relaxed as he said this, though, and it was only then that he noticed how tense she had become when he'd mentioned the Jabberwocky blood. Interesting.

"Please allow my mother to see you as you truly are."

He should have been expecting the request, but he was not. Perhaps it was the 'please' she had tacked onto the beginning of the statement, or the way her now-green eyes had been flicking back and forth between the two with such obvious concern. Whatever it was, Stayne inclined his head, and said, "I will, if that is what you wish." Not waiting for her reply, the Knave closed his eye briefly. Once it was open again, he took in the older woman's surprise. Her eyes fluttered for a moment as though she would be faint, but she found her courage and visibly shored herself against the changes she was having to make of her worldview.

"I would have been much happier to have never known any of this," she said, taking in his longer hair, eye-patch, and (he thought, rather dashing) scar. "And while your true appearance is very…interesting, Mr. Stayne…None of this explains why you have to return to that place! It will not let you leave again, Alice, I can feel it!"

Alice looked from her mother to Stayne and back again. Then she lifted her leg upon the table, narrowly avoiding the coffee carafe. She pulled her skirt up, and her mother's initial cry of dismay became a sharp breath of disbelief. "What…is it?"

Stayne had been anticipation itself when Alice had pulled her skirts upward. Any time he would be able to glimpse more of her smooth flesh was a good time, indeed, despite her snapping words. His salacious expectations faded at the sight that greeted him. "It is as I suspected. The Jabberwocky blood is attempting to leave you."

Where just the day before at the tea party Alice had been experiencing what she considered to be hives, she now had a spider-web like network of broken blood vessels just beneath her skin. They showed up violently purple against the fairness of her skin.

"See here." The Knave pointed at one particularly nasty spot. "Your veins are actually collapsing under the strain of trying to contain the blood. What you are not able to expel orally is bursting through in this manner."

Calmly, as if she were discussing the weather and not a journey between worlds, Alice said, "This, mother, is why I need to leave. I was not sure what exactly was happening, but I knew it was caused by an Underlandian source. Therefore, the only cure I may have would lie in Underland itself." There were also other concerns, but Alice was not about to tell her mother that she suspected the Red Queen, the very woman she'd helped exile, was plotting against her sister, and that her involvement would once again be required to prevent disaster.

Nor yet was she going to breathe one word about what had been occurring between herself and the Hatter. She'd told her that she had dreams in which one of her friends from Underland spoke with her, yes, but had not told her which friend, nor yet what exactly occurred in those dream-realities.

Wishing to know what her mother was thinking, but afraid of the answer (what if she was just pretending to understand this was not all just a dream she'd had-or worse, was beginning to believe it was a dream she herself was having?) Alice returned her attention back to Stayne. Lifting her leg back off the table, she could almost feel the man's disappointment at her re-covering of the appendage as she smoothed her skirts.

"How did you travel from Underland? Did you use the rabbit hole?"

Incredulousness painted the Knave's features. "The rabbit hole? Why, for the love of Underland, would I use that?"

"Isn't that a primary means of getting from here to there?" Alice grumped.

"Certainly…if one is a rabbit."

Alice very nearly gave herself over to the urge to kick him in the shin, hard, but was able to refrain. (Barely.) "Well, then, how did you?"

"Just as you did during your second trip to Underland, Alice. I used a Looking Glass."

"Will any Looking Glass do, or was it one in particular?"

Helen made a small sound at this, and both Stayne and Alice looked at her. She appeared to be accepting it all very well, considering, Stayne thought. (Abovegroundians not being known for their accepting minds.)

"Any will do."

It was not long after, while Alice and Stayne were discussing the merits of using a larger or a smaller Looking Glass, that Helen had stood, declared that she needed to lie down in a quiet place, and abruptly left the table. Wishing she could go after her, Alice nevertheless stayed put. There was more she wanted to know from the Knave of Hearts.

"Let us speak frankly now," she'd said, and his lips curled into an anticipatory snarl. He eyed her hungrily. "It would be my extreme pleasure," the word _pleasure_ fairly dripped out of his mouth, "to engage in any activity you so desire."

"Right now, the only activity I wish to participate in is talking," Alice said. "Why are you here?"

He told her of the entirety of Iracebeth's plan: how she wanted her found, humiliated, and then killed. His own decision to not follow through he related next, although he omitted his reasoning as to why. Instead he said, "Following you will allow me to regain my proper place in Underland once more, Alice. I do not wish to be exiled-even Death, should that befall me, would be preferably to the life I lived those few horrible days."

And so Alice had agreed. A terrible burning sensation as she recalled the dream-warning rolled through her stomach at the idea, but still she agreed. Looking-Glass travel was not something she had ever consciously done; and she would need someone to possibly assist her to Marmoreal, should she suddenly become weaker from her illness. It was not an ideal situation, but it was the one that Alice had.

"Because I am exiled," Stayne had warned, "We will not be able to arrive in Marmoreal itself, or even close to, through the glass. We will need to exit in the Outlands."


	11. Imprinting Memories

_Full notes and disclaimer in Chapter 1._

* * *

"_I'm inside. I'm __**you**__." _

_The Jabberwocky sounded as delighted as it had on the Frabjous Day. Its long black tongue flicked out, snakelike, before he grinned. He ran that same horrid tongue over his brilliantly white teeth, making Alice wish he didn't resemble Cheshire Cat so much with the gesture._

"_Try as you might, Bearer, you shall not expel me. We are joined as can be-brother and sister in arms! It is now as it always should have been."_

_Alice wanted nothing more than to tell the Jabber that she was not trying to rid herself of him, as she wasn't even aware that he was a part of her to begin with, and how could she get try to get rid of something she didn't even know about? (Although if she had, she certainly __**would**_ _have wanted to eliminate any bits of Jabberwocky from herself…what a terrible thought, that she was parading around with that creature inside of her, even in the smallest form!)_

_None of these words were possible for her, however, as she was suspended in mid-air, immobile. (She was getting very tired of dreaming dreams in which she was unable to be an active participant.)_

"_The Vorpal never understood, Bearer. So we were to always be enemies. Due to his own stubborn beliefs in 'Right' and 'Wrong'." The Jabberwocky's smile grew wider. "Proper and Improper." _

_The entire atmosphere around them started to shake, and the Jabberwocky whipped his head around, scanning the sky for what, Alice did not know. "Leave us!" he bellowed, purple energy bursting from his mouth in his rage. The already-crumbling castle Alice was suspended over lost more stones, as the sky rumbled more. "I am not finished here, Brother!" the Jabberwocky shrieked, and his wings began to unfurl, as his eyes turned the most virulent shade of turquoise-_

"Stop making those noises! Alice!"

A final rough shake roused her, as Alice rolled over and started coughing. A sharp pain blossomed just behind her eyes, and she gave a great cough. A warm spray of blood burst from her nose and splattered the ground beneath her. (And what didn't hit the ground rolled down her chin.) She gave another hacking cough and expelled the largest bit of phlegm she had ever had the misfortune to produce. Raising herself on one arm, Alice wiped her chin and nose with the back of her sleeve. It came away a rich plum-burgundy tone, showing vibrantly against the blue of her duster.

Re-adjusting herself so she was not splayed across the ground, but rather sitting as properly as she could manage given she was atop of bed roll in the middle of a rolling field in the Outlands of Underland (which was really just a great big expanse of dirt, scrub bushes, and more dirt). When she was seated and breathing normally again, she turned and glared at her traveling companion.

"You were grunting. It was most disturbing." The Knave spoke with a harsh grumble, but Alice thought she detected a bit of concern in the back of his eyes. If she looked very, very closely. (And she did want to find at least something pleasant about the man-she was like to be stuck with him for at least a few more days.)

"And you did not think that perhaps I could not breathe?" Alice asked archly.

"No."

Huffing, Alice decided it was not worth her time to argue with the surly man. He'd been bear-like ever since they had left London, and she was in no mood to coddle the rake.

They had mutually decided it was better to leave for Underland sooner rather than later, as they could not be sure how much time had passed, or would pass, in that realm if they should delay. Indeed, they were not even sure of how much time had already passed in Underland.

"For all I know," the Knave had drawled, "Iracebeth has already moved on to the next stage of our plot without me. She never has been known for her patience."

While his words had been said in order to pressure Alice into deciding to travel with him while it was still a fresh concept in her mind (as he was sure she would decide against it, if given a bit more time. Or worse yet, someone else would come Above to fetch her, and then where would he be?) there was absolute truth in the statement.

Alice herself felt the need to leave keenly, as she was well aware that while her mother may seem to be accepting of the concept for now, once her rational side overtook her once more as Alice knew it would (pity rationality was so strong in her mother as she would have dearly loved having two irrational parents) she would once again be calling her daughter mad, and calling for a physician.

She needed to be gone before then. When (_if_, a small voice whispered) she returned, well, then she would just have to worry about that then, wouldn't she? (Alice ignored the questions as to why she wouldn't return. There was nothing for her in Underland, no reason to stay, was there? And she had a very important journey to Jakarta ahead of her! Wouldn't that be thrilling, to see India in all of it's glory?)

So the Knave went back to his quarters to gather what possessions he had in the Above and to purchase what supplies he felt they would need for traveling the Outlands. Alice had gone to her room, packing an extra traveling suit, a pocket knife that had been a gift from Lord Ascot, and a few other assorted trinkets she couldn't bear to part with for very long. (She steadfastly refused to acknowledge that she gathered these items on the chance that she would not be able to come Above again.)

Among her treasures was a picture of her father, a bracelet Margaret had fashioned her when they were both young and silly (or as silly as Margaret had ever been), and a masculine brooch that she had received from her mother, on the eve of her almost-engagement to Hamish. She paused over the brooch consideringly. Odd, but for all of her curiosity, she had never asked her mother what it was for, or why she was in possession of such a piece of jewelry.

It was silver, and a general roundish shape; in the very center was a detailed boar's head. A Latin phrase scrolled across the top, but Alice couldn't translate it. (Latin having been so _dull_ when she was a student that she never bothered to properly learn it.) She tucked it into her front duster pocket, intent on asking her its use before leaving. Leaving…

Oh, she wasn't prepared for this! It was one thing to dream of Underland, and to think wistfully for all of the grandly strange characters that she had met there, but this...There was every possibility that she would never be able to return to Above. Her mother had said so (and while her mother may have been misguided about many things, to Alice's knowledge, she'd never outright lied to her) and the Knave had agreed with her assessment. (She _did_ believe the Knave would lie, if given the opportunity.)

But if the Knave was able to travel willy-nilly through mirrors and such, why could she not? He was a creature of Underland, as her mother believed Alice herself was turning into (and what a queer feeling that gave her; the look her mother had given her, in the parlor, as if she was watching a dead person up and walking about!). If he could travel at will, there was no logical reason why she herself could not as well! (This was of course discounting the fact that things in Underland ever went apace with logic. Alice enjoyed thinking of herself as supremely logical, and so would just avoid any inconvenient truths that interfered with her rationale.)

Besides, it kept the panic at the idea of what she was about to do at bay.

She'd gone downstairs then, meeting her sister at the bottom landing. "Margaret!" she cried, surprised to see her there. Last she'd known, Margaret and her husband Lowell had plans for the day; she hadn't thought she'd get a chance to say good-bye.

Tears pricked her sister's eyes. "So you were going to leave on another grand journey, without even letting me know you were off. And after I took you shopping for the very clothes you travel in, too!" Margaret tried to speak in a stern, sisterly manner, but her voice betrayed her, and the words came out trembling.

Alice could hardly deny that she was travel bound; she was wearing the suit, and she held her knapsack in her left hand. "Yes, I am to leave as soon as my companion is available."

It was impossible to know what their mother had told her. As soon as Alice thought that, she became quite vexed at herself, and set about proving her Errant Thought wrong. There was a simple remedy, after all.

"What has mother told you?" she asked. There, that showed _that_ errant thought! Impossible, indeed.

"Just that you had urgent business that needed addressed and were to leave immediately."

Alice looked down at her shoes, finding it hard to meet Margaret's eyes. She hated upsetting her sister, more even than their mother. "I am sorry that I interrupted your plans for the day."

"I would have been much more upset if you had left and I had not had the chance to see you off. Are we to meet your companion at the docks, or are we all traveling together to there from here?"

Not knowing how to answer her sister's assumption, Alice was luckily saved from the necessity of doing so by Helen entering the room. "Alice!" she called, and gave a small start to see both of her girls upon the stair. She stared at them for a long moment, drinking in their features.

"Oh," Helen sighed. "I do wish I'd commissioned that portrait I meant to, but there always seemed to be something else more pertinent..." Alice's mother cut herself off with a wave of her hand. Her eyes traced over Alice's curls, down to Margaret's delicately gloved hands, back to Alice's eyes, and then to Margaret again.

"Alice, Mr. Masin-" Helen caught herself. "Mr. _Stayne_ is waiting for you in the front hall." She emphasized his surname. Alice's lip quirked to one side. It seemed her mother was unwilling to continue calling the tall man by his adopted name, and no wonder. Helen was desperately unfond of substerfuge. There was an odd glint in her mother's eyes, a burning sort of determination. The air between them felt heavy for a long moment, full of thoughts unspoken.

Alice came down the last step, and the moment was gone. The silver of the brooch flashed in her right hand as she revealed it. "Mother, you gave this to me right before Hamish proposed to me. I never did find out what exactly it was."

"It's a plaid pin." Smiling softly, Helen picked it up and held it to the light. "When a Scotsman wears his plaid, this pin is what holds it in place. I had hoped you could give it to Hamish, for your marriage."

Imagining Hamish in a kilt was ridiculous; Alice snorted inelegantly, and even Margaret smiled. "I know it seems absurd now," Helen conceded, "but Lord Ascot did say as to how he would like his young man married in full regalia, despite whatever Hamish himself thought." She went to pocket the pin. "Forgive an old woman her sentimentality, darling. I suppose you have no use for it now."

"No!" The word gushed out of Alice's mouth. Both Margaret and Helen stared at her, wondering what caused that outburst.

"That is to say…" An image of the Hatter as he had dressed on the Frabjous Day came to her; kilt swinging as he walked, head held as high and as proud as any Laird's. "I should like to keep it, if I may?"

Helen tilted her head to one side, considering her younger daughter. "Do you know, my mother gave this to me, and it was given to her by her father?" she asked, and this time it was her daughters who looked to Helen in amazement. "Robert Campbell. Named after 'the Bruce' himself." Pulling it out of her pocket, Helen's thumb traced across the lettering at the top before passing the brooch back to Alice.

"Do you remember enough of your Latin to translate that, my dear?"

A faint flush burned high on her cheeks. "Our Latin texts never had any pictures or conversations in them."

"_Ne Obliviscaris,_" Margaret said, voice as haughty as it ever was when she was giving Alice her lessons. "Translates to: Do Not Forget."

_You won't remember me, _he had said, plaintively_._

And she'd just smiled_. How can I forget?_

Was everything she'd experienced thus far leading up to this moment? The air about her felt heavy with the hand of Fate. She could practically taste it thick on the back of her throat. (Well, not that she'd gone around tasting Fate's hand, or anything. If Fate had a hand. Something to ask, if she had the opportunity, when in Underland once again.) This was the path she was always meant to take. Did this moment appear in the Oraculum? If there was an Oraculum solely for tracking her life's course, she knew this moment would appear there.

Margaret took the ribbon wound through her hair out, and handed it to Alice without a word. The brooch slid easily onto the black bit of fabric. Holding up her hair with one hand, Alice handed the now-necklace to her mother with the other. She tied it so it rested just below her collarbone; loose enough to not choke her, close enough that she would not easily lose it.

"Thank you," Alice said, voice tight.

"Are you ready?" They'd all looked up then to see Stayne standing just a few feet away. How long he'd been there was any guess; he looked prodigiously unhappy. Alice could not guess at what he could be thinking of that made him frown so, unless it was the prospect of the trip itself. (Which would have been reason enough to frown.)

Alice did know, though, that he'd been in a foul mood since that moment, and did not seem intent on improving his disposition in the least.

Even Margaret's reaction to them disappearing through the Looking Glass in the drawing room had not been enough to cheer him, and Alice had thought that comical enough.

Even if part of her felt terrible for laughing at her sister's faint.

"Give me but a moment, Stayne, and we shall be on our way again." Alice stomped off as best she could with a woozy head, scanning the area for any place that would provide her with the barest modicum of privacy, but of course, there were none, which did nothing at all for her own mood. "This is going to feel like a long trip indeed," she grumbled.

* * *

She was getting worse, not better.

Stayne watched as the blonde woman struggled to her feet, wavering a bit before she steadied and solidified her stance. The fact that she was coughing up the blood now instead of spewing it would have been considered a good sign, if it had not been preceded by a violent nosebleed.

The noises she'd been making in her slumber had not been promising, either, nor yet again the vacant way she was currently staring at the tumbleweeds rolling across the Outlands.

Despite what he'd told Alice, it had been perfectly obvious to him that she'd been unable to breathe; otherwise, he'd have just left her to sleep, grunting and all, as he'd desperately needed the time to think.

Originally, he'd had no real plans to take her to Marmoreal. He'd told her he would, certainly, but never with the belief he would _actually_ do so. For if he took her to Marmoreal, where Iracebeth currently was, than the former Red Queen would see very easily that she was not dead, and Stanye's deflection would be obvious. He'd thought to perhaps sneak her back to Salazum Grum, or perhaps even Snud, in the furthest corner from the Tulgey Wood. At least until he'd convinced her of the wisdom of re-accepting her Crown from Underland. Then, oh _then…_they'd return to Marmoreal.

But now, with her so ill…he'd hoped simply returning to Underland was going to be enough to heal her from her affliction, to stop the Jabber blood from its exodus, but it had not been. Circumstances were fighting against him. If he wanted her whole, it now seemed he had no choice but to _actually_ take her to Marmoreal as he said he would. But what of Iracebeth? His thoughts kept swirling one around the other, and he cursed his inability to focus.

His focus would have been helped considerably if Alice were not wearing that awful brooch about her throat.

He'd happened upon the Kingsley women (and what a fine group of women they were!) just after Helen told Alice that he was waiting for her in the hall. (He'd followed her instead of waiting, as he enjoyed watching the way the older woman's skirts had swayed as she walked.) Stayne had only seen Margaret in passing before, and he had never seen the three of them together. The sight quite distracted him for several moments, and he only picked up their narrative again when Alice had sharply cried, "No!"

Then he'd looked at the object of contention. It was a plaid pin. A plaid pin, as in a pin wore by those who wore plaids and kilts. Kilts such as the one the Hatter wore, on that day he'd held his claymore over Stayne's head, and-

He'd looked up at Alice, then, as she told her mother she'd like to have it, and he knew she was not aware of it, but her heart had been in her eyes.

Or rather, _her_ heart had been in _his_ eyes. _His_ eyes were _her_ heart? Either way, _he_ and _she_ and her _heart_ were connected in a way that made Stayne want to break every bone in his body.

_He_ being, of course, that thrice damned Mad Hatter.

What was he to do? If he led her away from Marmoreal, she would die from whatever was causing the Jabber blood to leave. If he took her to Marmoreal, and Iracebeth didn't manage her death, if she happened to be so fortunate as to survive...he would still lose his Queen, lose his Kingship...to Tarrant Hightopp.

To that _jumped up milliner_!

He wanted to kick something, but there was nothing around but low shrubs (which would have been unsatisfying), their supplies (which he couldn't afford to ruin), Alice (and as tempting as that was, he'd better not, he decided) and the ground itself.

So he stopped his foot. Hard.

He felt better for doing it once, so he did it again. And again.

Soon he was pounding the ground with his feet, over and over, and shout-screaming nonsense mixed with the occasional foul word. A dust plum rose up about him where he stomped, and he only stopped when it became difficult to breathe.

Sweat trickled down his forehead, and he panted slightly from exertion as he waited for the air to clear, hands upon his knees. When he was able to see again, Alice was before him, a slightly bemused expression upon her face. She'd managed to stir herself enough to clean the blood off, he noted.

"Feel better?" she asked.

"For now."

* * *

An envelope was suspended in mid-air, its cream tones contrasting starkly with the purple fog that surrounded it. The Hatter saw it, and nothing but, yet continued to look around, hoping that perhaps Alice (he was at this point comfortable enough with having her constantly on his mind that she was relinquished from her status as only-a-pronoun) was somehow behind it or underneath it. He did not like the nights that he had to wait for her for any length of time. (Funny, he thought, how that could be, when their nights as such only numbered three, and out of those, two of them were waiting nights!)

Perhaps she was too small once more, and was clinging to the back of the envelope? (He didn't like the idea of her being small once again, nor of her needing to cling to the envelope.) Although, if she were small, she needn't necessarily have anything to do with the envelope...she could be upon the ground, and simply too slight for him to see, what with it being so thick with the misty fog. And Alice _quite_ disliked the idea of being lost in that fog, he knew, from her reaction to when he merely _pretended_ to be lost in it, and he should really look for her…

Unless, perhaps…? Could the envelope be from _her_? An…Invitation, perhaps?

Such an idea made him giddily clumsy; he stumbled twice over his own feet as he raced towards the missive.

If Tarrant had not been so keen on simply getting to the envelope, and perhaps had paid a bit more attention to his surroundings, he would have noticed that the envelope was _not_ suspended in mid-air at all. Rather, it was held by two furry clawed paws, one on either side, each the color of an overcast sunset.

But he _was_ in a hurry, and he didn't notice that at all, nor the brief glimmer of white teeth that winked in the air after the envelope was snatched up. Teeth that followed the paws in evaporating out, and becoming just that much more purple mist against the darkness.

The Hatter grasped the envelope, sniffing it deeply before anything else. Fresh ink, nothing more, came to his nose. Disappointed, he looked again, and now there were words upon the surface of it, in a very short sort of rhyme. It looked as though it had been written carefully by an unpracticed hand.

**Hold Tightly to This!**

**Don't Dare Let Go!**

**Keep It Clenched in Your Fist!**

**For to You It Has Much to Show!**

A few small ink splatters followed, and then, at the very bottom, scrawled hastily, it read,

**Now Wake Up!**

Tarrant did, with a sudden gasp, green eyes blinking in disorientation. Alice had said she'd see him tomorrow night, and today was yesterday's tomorrow, and he seen nothing of her.

It was surely out of regret, he decided. She'd told him to stop, and he did stop, even though stopping was the furthest thing from what he wanted to do that could have been imagined, but-perhaps she'd thought she was being rude? Alice _was_ terribly concerned with polite behavior, and neither one of them had issued the other an invitation. He'd like to think that two individuals whom had banded together to help overthrow a tyrannical monarch would be beyond such pleasantries. But if that were the case, then she could feel just as familiar with Thackery or Chess (and he didn't like that Idea at all!).

Still, if she was waiting on formality, then he supposed he could pen her a note letting her know when she visited again (preferably in person, as he did not want to cause her injury by having her humanness travel to Somewhere Else again) that she would be _more _than welcome to engage his person in any such activities she should choose-but how would one phrase such a thing? And where would he deliver said card to?

Card…invitation…envelope!

With a wordless cry, he remembered the envelope he'd just received in Somewhere Else with its (rather dull) little rhyme on the front (honestly, if you were going to go to the trouble to write something in verse, he thought, it might as well be a colorful one.).

Ripping the cream colored paper open, he let the uninspiring verse fall to the floor, as his eyes hungrily attacked the page. There were no words upon it; rather, just a slowly swirling spot of ink in the very center, much like the Oraculum right before it began to draw futures…

Just like that, a picture did indeed begin to form. It was Alice! Oh, she looked positively precious, wearing trousers and a long duster coat. He knew just the hat that would match such an outfit, and…

The picture was not done. A knapsack formed in her fist, a Looking Glass before her…and the Knave of Hearts stood beside her.

_The Knave of Hearts stood beside her._

He didn't know for how long the Badness took hold of him, nor exactly what he did during that time. (To this day, all in his acquaintance that were present in the castle that day refuse to tell him.) He did know that he seized right before it took him, and even in the midst of the shuddering, he was able to fling the paper away from himself, before he was able to cause harm to it. For one does not destroy a paper such as the one he had been gifted with, even if it was the bearer of only bad tidings.

When he came to, he was in the throne room. Queen Mirana, Mallymkun, Thackery, McTwisp, and, incongruously enough, Iracebeth- all stood around him, with varying degrees of worry or anger upon their faces. (Well, only Thackery and Iracebeth looked angry; the rest bore the worried visage.)

"It is most fortunate I insisted you abide in Marmoreal for a time, Hatta," Mirana said. "If this had occurred outside of the White Castle, I do not know what the consequences would have been. Do you remember anything?"

"No, your Majesty. Something unusual indeed it must have been, to have me here laying upon your floor. Not that it's not a lovely floor, as floors go, but it's generally not the habit to lay oneself out upon it. Although perhaps we should; I imagine the floor gets awfully tired of simply being trod upon all the time, and would appreciate a break to enjoy a gentler form of appreciation. "

Mirana shook her head and ignored the Hatter's ramble. "If you don't remember, we'll leave what you did alone. But do tell me if you recall..." Seemingly from thin air, she pulled out the very paper which caused his reaction in the first place. "Where you acquired this?"

"May I stand?" he wheezed. (It was uncomfortable indeed to lay flat out on a marble floor with a ring of faces surrounding you, and one of those faces being of an individual who had ordered your execution on more than one occasion, besides. Mirana nodded, and the Hatter stood, shoving aside Thackery and Mally in his bid for room.

"T'was in Somewhere Else," he responded then, nodding at the paper. "Waiting instead of _she_." (This time he used _she_ instead of Alice's name for fear of what Iracebeth's reaction would be to hearing her name more than anything else.)

"I suspected as such," Mirana murmured, eyes not leaving the ink drawings. It was only after a moment that she noticed her sister's very determined gaze just under her shoulder, as if she would be able to see through the paper from the underside and read what was upon its top. (Iracebeth, for her part, seemed to be wishing she was not so short.) Snapping the paper suddenly shut, she shoved it inside her bodice (much to the Hatter's chagrin-he was mad, but not so mad as he'd be going fishing for his wee paper _there_, her being a Queen and all) and said, a brilliant smile upon her face, "Hatta, are you amiable to the Idea of playing a small tune for us? I do know how my sister once doted upon your talents."

Without waiting for a reply, she turned upon her heel and floated out of the room. The rest of the room's occupants had little choice but to follow in her wake. Her twinkling skirts soon led them to the music room, and Mirana went expectantly to the small piano that sat in the very center. "Come, Hatta, and play for us."

The one time the Hatter had actually played in front of the Red Queen before, it had been well before she had taken over all of Underland, when both Queens ruled jointly. To say she was displeased with his performance would be an understatement; she'd called for his head, and his only reprieve had been a distraction provided by the Red King. (Who was, rather inconveniently for the Hatter at this moment, very dead.)

But the Hatter was loyal to his White Queen; and so, without complaint (though with much dread) he sat upon the piano bench. He understood she was distracting her sister from the paper, and news of Alice reaching her, even if no one else knew her motivation.

"With all respect, your Majesty…" Mallymkun spoke up, not wanting her friend to have to relive his humiliation in front of not one but two Queens. "The Hatter's just had a very trying experience. Perhaps Bayard or…" she trailed off when she saw Mirana's finger waving at her. Just her pointer finger, shaken back and forth, very slowly, but it was enough to let Mally know her comments were unwanted just then.

"W-what shall I p-play, your Majesty?" the Hatter asked.

Mirana waved her hand. "Whatever you like," she said, "As long as there is singing, as well."

Now the poor Hatter was very nervous indeed; he risked a glance at Iracebeth, and saw her murderous rage. She had not forgotten his past performance, then. Gulping slightly, he set his fingers to the keys just as all the room's other occupants (that he was trying very hard not to notice, as they'd make him nervous-er still) settled into the chairs and cushions that were scattered about. He knew not what he should play-he just started tinkling out the first thing that came to his head.

"_Are you going to Scarborough Fair? _

_Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme_

_Remember me to the one who lives there_

_She was once a true love of mine…"_

The words, when they left his mouth, came truly toned, clear, and beautiful. His fingers hit just the right keys at the right moment. He played it perfectly in Time. Every creature in the room sat stunned (most especially Iracebeth, as she'd heard him play before, and he was _awful_) as he continued to play, even the Hatter himself. Every creature, that is, save the White Queen.

"_Tell her to make me a cambric shirt_

_Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme_

_Without no seam or needlework_

_Then she'll be a true love of mine."_

McTwisp looked about him, to see if the others were seeing and hearing what he was as well. Every other face appeared at least as surprised as he felt, except for, as said before, Queen Mirana.

"You knew?" the Hatter thought he heard the rabbit hiss at the Queen, although that might have been his imagination. McTwisp was not really the hissing sort. Mirana did however smile enigmatically when he said more loudly, loud enough there was no mistaking the word, "How?"

Her smile grew wider, until it almost stretched off her face. Leaning down close, she whispered in one of those long ears. Tarrant squinted his eyes, determined to make out the shapes those lips were forming. If he weren't completely mad, he'd almost be convinced the word Mirana said was _Alice._


	12. Doors

_ Full notes and disclaimer in Chapter One. Outlandish translations appear at the end of the chapter._

* * *

"I am most displeased you told McTwisp of our little game."

Queen Mirana smoothed down the front of her skirts. She was seated at a small tea-table in her Conservatory; it was one of the few places in her Kingdom she was able to go to be relatively alone, as being Conservative had gone very much out of fashion, to the point hardly anyone even wished to be seen near the door. Smoke curled at her feet, in an almost sensuous glide.

She'd never admit it, least of all to the creature with whom she was conversing, but she was nervous. She knew as soon as she whispered her Champion's name into the rabbit's ear earlier that this conversation would occur. Knowing, however, did not make the event itself any more pleasant.

"I hardly told him the entirety of it, Chessur."

The smoke solidified, revealing the corporeal form of the Cat. "You said enough. He is aware that you know more of what is happening than you've told them previously. He'll tell Tarrant, and if Time allows him, he'll figure it out. He's mad, Mirana, not stupid."

"It is too late now, even should he realize my intentions!" Mirana said, her voice's cheerfulness turning brittle. She batted her eyes coyly at the Cat. "That is, if you're sure you've managed your part successfully?"

"I'm sure," Cheshire drawled, managing to look nonchalantly annoyed. (A rare feat, indeed.) "I do wonder what you mean by saying _your_ intentions, however." Floating towards her, the Cat flipped lazily, evaporating as he did so, only to reappear centimeters away from her nose. "This is why I never involve myself in politics, you know. Here I thought they were _our_ intentions." He sniffed, "I'm hurt," managing to sound not the least bit emotionally injured at all.

A gentle twist of the lips joined Mirana's answer. "I do not mean to sound doubtful of you, Chess. It is only that they are both very important to me."

"Both, eh?" the Cat slyly grinned. Mirana's eyes flashed sharply at him, but he ignored her silent threat and continued with, "I _had_ wondered whom you would next deem…important. Everyone in the kingdom has, actually. The town of Lion and Unicorn," (for at this point no one in Underland could remember the town's original name, and had taken to just calling the town Lion and Unicorn, for the two inhabitants whom fought up and down its streets each day) "has been keeping a betting board."

Back straightening in indignation, the White Queen said carefully, "You do yourself no credit with those insinuations, Cheshire Cat. I had thought you above such pettiness."

The Cat twisted away from her, as if he were swimming through the air, on his back. "You forget, Mirana. I _exist_ for pettiness. It's what makes my little kitty heart go pitter-pat." A loud purr filled the air, and Mirana uneasily recalled that cats purr not only out of pleasure, but anger, as well. "You also seem to have forgotten that I am involved in this only because it pleases me to be so. I have sworn no vows of sovereignty to you. I may turn this into my own personal game at any time."

"Isn't it already?" A rarely heard bitterness entered the woman's voice, and the pink tinge around her eyes darkened.

"Now, now, Mirana, be careful. Much more of that nasty attitude and people may start talking. Making comparisons between you and that unlovable sister of yours."

A set of claws unsheathed themselves from a dusky paw, and flexed a bit. Cheshire inspected the points, and said, musingly, "Those two, that are so important to you? Is this entire game about proving their loyalty to you? They feel it needful to obey you, you are aware, nothing more. To them, if you are not on the throne, Underland is evil chaos. It has nothing to do with _love_."

Fear radiated from the Queen outward. He was stirring up the wrong kinds of emotions, much too swiftly for her to control. "Begone from my sight, Cat."

His grin just curled up wider on his face.

"Begone!" Mirana nearly bellowed, as panic grabbed her throat. No trace of a smile could be seen anywhere on her continence. As she shouted, a great wind whipped through the air, and lashed towards the Cat. He blinked twice, slowly, taking just long enough so as to show his unconcern at her display of temper, then winked, before he faded out of sight.

While Mirana was still breathing heavily and attempting to reign in the darkness of her anger, a jaunty knock sounded on the doorframe. "Your Majesty?" the voice asked in a very familiar and, at the moment, unwelcome, lisp.

Taking a deep breath, Mirana centered herself before lifting her head high, smile firmly in place. "Hello, Hatter!"

An answering smile touched the corners of Tarrant's mouth as he opened the door, but it did not stretch into a full grin. "I believe there are a few things we're needing to discuss, your Majesty. May I come in?"

* * *

"Alice, what do you see here?"

The Knave stood just behind her shoulder, rather closer than she liked. A vague memory floated through her mind, of a Duchess with a head nearly as large as the Red Queen's who was prodigiously found of morals. She had no concept of another's comfort if she wished to be close to you, either.

"I don't see anything. Well, more shrubbery. That is all," Alice replied, a small smile on her face as she pondered the possibility of the Knave and the Duchess being relations.

Stranger things occurred in Underland, after all, than a terribly short woman and an obscenely tall man being kin.

Her smile blooming as directly as it did after his leaning into her presence lent the man more hope than he'd felt since first seeing the plaid pin she now wore round her neck. If she was smiling as he leaned against her, mayhap her heart was not as set as he'd feared?

An initial physical attraction was more than enough for him to build from, he silently chortled. He would not mind that at all. He leaned a bit closer still, eye carefully on her face, as he bent towards her ear, and said, "I know there's an exit here somewhere. Look again."

The smile disappeared from Alice's face as she took a step forward, so as to remove herself from Stayne's overwhelming presence. He'd gotten much too close for her comfort, as she was still wary of the man and his intentions. Her face burned as she wondered if she would need to deny his advances the way she had in Salazum Grum.

She needed his assistance to get to Underland, and she'd wanted him removed from the presence of her family in the Above, post-haste, hence having him accompany her. (Not to mention she might need to use him should her illness completely steal her strength, but thinking such thoughts made her feel dreadfully tense, so she avoided doing so. If and when it happened, he would be there. She also ignored the niggle that told her it was a Bad Idea to trust him to lead her to Marmoreal, let alone be a gentleman should she become incapacitated. Another piece of very good advice she was giving herself that she was not following, she mused.)

"Perhaps if you told me what you wanted me to look for?" Alice queried.

Smirking now (as the poor creature had to remove herself from his person; there was a bit of a flush about her cheeks, which was very good indeed. He'd flustered her!) he drawled, "There are…no doors, present?"

Alice scanned the ground again. "No, there's…wait."

She walked up to a strangely twisted little tree, grey and completely covered in stick-sharp vines. There, tangled amongst the brush, was not a door wholly, but rather, a large piece of a door. The middle, she noted, as she could just make out the gleam of the well-worn handle. "Here, a bit of door!"

"You'll need to touch it before I can See it," Stayne said, a bit of shame in his gestures. One disliked showing a lack or weakness in front of an individual one intended on courting, after all. "I may be able to clothe myself with Perception, but I do not possess the skill of Sensing it."

Intrigued, Alice asked, "What's the difference?" She didn't remove her gaze from the piece of door, fancying if she did so it could disappear, and she'd have to re-find it all over again.

"You can _sense_ Perception with a Sense of Perception, of course. Without it, you can not."

She touched the part of the door she'd found, and Stayne cursed so as to make Alice's ears burn. (And she'd been aboard a ship for months on end hearing sailors speak!). "Bloody Outlandish humor!" he fumed. "We need to find the other bits of door. Usually when they do this they break it into threes." He stalked over and snatched up the middle of the door, setting it on the ground. "Look around, they have to be around here somewhere. The Outlanders are not so mad as of yet as to completely destroy their means of traveling Inland. While you're doing that I'm going to dig up a shrubbery."

Alice had thought herself adapting rather well to being in Underland again, and had opened her mind to plenty of things that did not work logically, but for this odd declaration she had no explanation. "A shrubbery? Whatever for?"

Always, with the questions, questions, questions, the Knave tsked silently, before giving himself a firm reminder that constantly being asked questions was much preferable to constantly living with the threat of being beheaded if he did not…perform to standards.

"If you must know, there are Knights currently residing in the Tulgey Wood that will reward us handsomely for a shrubbery that is large, but not too large, and nice, but not too expensive. I believe this one will do." He pointed at a bush that was indeed large, but not too large, but for nice, Alice had her doubts. Her dubiousness must have shown on her face, because the Knave said, exasperated, "You don't want to walk the entire way to Marmoreal, do you? We may well get horses for this."

"For a shrubbery?"

Stayne rubbed one hand down his face. "Yes, for a shrubbery," he hissed. "Have you found any more of that door?" he asked, before he lost his temper with her, and regretted it.

"Yes, but…" she turned, pointing. "It's up there." The spot she pointed to was just above the Knave's head, on the branch of one of the tallest trees in the Outlands.

"Of course it is." Stayne shook his head. "Climb up." He kneeled in the dirt and patted his shoulder.

"What?" Alice squawked, beginning to feel rather like the parrot Lady Ascot kept in her salon. (At least, she had kept it until parrots went out of fashion; what happened to the bird after that, Alice did not know, and shuddered at the possibilities.)

"I can't see it. If I can't see the door, I can't grasp it. You need to touch it, remember?"

"Right." Taking a deep breath, Alice stared at the Knave's offered back, wondering how she was to sit upon it. She'd have to sit with one leg on either side of his head in order to touch the door, she decided, the way she had sat upon her father as a child, when he'd rush her about in the gardens, laughing. It was a pleasant memory to bolster her confidence at having to perform an unpleasant task, at least. She felt the full weight of the impropriety of her situation then, as she straddled his shoulders and he stood.

Here she was, wearing trousers and sitting astride a man's shoulders, a man whom she was in the company of without any chaperone, to boot. If Lady Ascot and her myriad friends ever heard of Alice doing such a thing, she'd be ruined. The thought caused her to grin.

Stayne, for his part, had to stifle a groan as Alice wrapped her legs around his neck. Pleasant warmth surrounded him, parts of her pressed fully against him that he'd _appreciate_ much better if they were facing his front instead of where they _were_ placed. As it was, he had to resist the urge to turn his head and sink his teeth into the fleshy part of her thigh, as it rubbed enticingly against his chin. He'd love to hear her squeal.

So distracted was he that he didn't even realize she'd touched the second door piece until she rapped her knuckles on the top of his head, lightly. "Will you kneel back down, please? I've got it." He presently did as she requested, and she slid off of him, bracing her free hand upon his shoulders as the other held on to the door. Stayne's eye closed in bliss at the sensations she was unwittingly creating, and only came back to attention when he heard her say, "One more to go!" He opened his eye and looked at her hungrily, where she was kneeled next to the almost-complete door.

The look the Knave gave Alice made her uncomfortable indeed. He appeared to be ready to pounce on her at any moment, the way Kitty would do to unsuspecting insects in her mother's garden. "Right, then," she said, a bit shakily. "To find that last bit."

It was soon found half buried in the dirt, just a few yards away from where the rest of the door had been strewn. Stayne had just finished digging up his shrubbery and binding the roots with a scrap of fabric and twine when she drug it over to the other two pieces.

"Now what?"

Brushing the dirt from his hands, Stayne gestured towards the door, saying, "See it as whole."

"It's not whole, it's in pieces." Alice reminded him. Really, he was beginning to sound as mad as the Hatter. (Although with a much less pleasant constitution.)

"That is why you need to _See_ it as whole." the Knave stressed the word See, and Alice started. "Oh!" Her now-green eyes took in the door with a new urgency. She squinted, tilted her head, and said under her breath, "Six impossible things, Alice. This is only one, and not so difficult at all!"

The door shimmered briefly, and then it was whole, laying upon the ground. Stayne nodded his approval and then knelt down, opening the door _into_ the ground. Scenery nearly identical to what already surrounded them waited on the other side.

The Knave fell through the hole the door had created, tumbling a bit upon the ground on the other side, and sitting up slowly to re-orient himself. (As what had been sideways was now up-ways.) He waved his hand at Alice to follow, and taking a deep breath, she did so, falling through to the other side.

* * *

Stayne was back in Underland, and it was sending rumbles throughout the White Court. It seemed everywhere Iracebeth went someone was gossiping about him; although they'd shut up right quickly when they noted her presence. Still, she was hearing enough.

The ridiculous man went to all the trouble to reappear in the Outlands and travel inward. The quickly stifled whispers and the parchment that the Hatter held (and how one such as he ever managed to be gifted with such a pretty piece, she didn't know, but would dearly like to find out) had told her as much.

Iracebeth had learned long ago to be able to take in small details of events to piece together a larger picture. There were times she willfully blinded herself from the truth (as was the case with her dearly departed husband), but that did not mean the ability was not there. Details, after all, the little touches, are what truly move the Heart, and she was nothing if not the Queen of Hearts.

She'd managed a brief glance at the Hatter's Paper, but as said, it had been enough. A longer look had not really been needed anyways, as it just confirmed a feeling she'd had settle deep into her bones the night before.

Stayne intended to betray her. Had _already_ betrayed her.

Alice was back in Underland as well. She would need to make her move on her own accord, now, and before the pair reached Marmoreal. Firstly, however, there were things she needed to discover, and allies to be bought.

"How many vials were collected?" the former Red Queen spoke with a female courtier, one with white hair piled so high atop her head it was a wonder she was able to walk at all. If anyone had chosen to look closely at her, they would have recognized her as the former Lady Big Ears, sans giant ears, of course. No one _did_ look closely at courtiers, though, (as they were normally such boring, simpering creatures) and so she was safe from accusations of treachery.

"I know not, your highness. I estimate a dozen doubled over, mayhap a bit more."

"That many?"

"Indeed. However, only two were distributed. _That_ is well known." And indeed it would be, for anyone who received one would wish to brag about it; and even if they didn't, every other member of the court would not be satisfied until they were aware of the wish-gainer's identities. It was always helpful to have the ear of the Queen's favorites, after all. (For even a Queen like Mirana played favorites.)

"Two? And to whom?"

"One to her Champion, immediately after the slaying of the Beast. The other, to the Hatter."

Iracebeth's eyes grew round, which was really a frightening sight in her enormous face. Could that be the reason he had that paper? Or had he traded in his wish for musical talent? No, Mirana had been too eager for her to witness that. It had been meant to confuse and lull her, as many of Mirana's amusements were meant to please and lull.

Her voice, her air and manner of walking, the absurd way she flicked her over-long eyelashes at unsuspecting persons…it was all designed to make them feel at ease, feel as though the Queen thought of them as special, when really, they were just another in a long line of those _special_ to her. They'd serve her and be glad to do so, never seeing that their free will had been completely subjugated under that of their Queen. And she would keep them enthralled with her person, just enough…a small comment here or there to them every month or so, if a courtier; a visit to their village every six months, if a peasant, and so on and so forth. _Just_ enough to make them believe she cared.

It was one thing Iracebeth truly loathed her for. When she was Red Queen, Iracebeth used those below her for her purposes, yes. It is what Queens do. She did not, however, pretend she was doing anything other than that. They served a purpose for their Queen. When she was done with them, it was off with their head. Mirana, by contrast, collected people, and used them even beyond death. (Buttered fingers being not so easy to come by when one considers themselves a pacifist, after all.) She thought it extremely hypocritical of her sister to think of Iracebeth as evil when they had much the same turn of mind.

"Why would my sister gather so many vials of Jabber blood and then only use two?" Iracebeth mused aloud, momentarily forgetting she was not alone. "It spoils so dreadfully quickly."

"I believe, your eminence, that is because it is generally believed that a tainted wish fulfilled is better than no wish fulfilled at all."

_Or perhaps she desired the Idea of the wishes more than anything else_, Iracebeth pondered, hearing the eagerness in the other woman's voice, the underlying yearning for a wish, even as she said, a tainted one. _Brava, dear sister, well played_. Subjects and courtiers will do much for their Monarch if there is always the silent promise of your dearest wish fulfilled at hand, and although Mirana acted the fool for many, she was not so much of one that she would not realize that Iracebeth had her own followers, those whom would it would be needful to keep in line after her removal. And with Miri's 'Do No Harm' vow…yes, it was a very tidy means of control. Not as absolutely effective as head removal, but effective nonetheless.

"Thank you, Big Ea…" Iracebeth trailed off, knowing she could not call the woman to whom she spoke by that particular moniker while in Marmoreal. She picked back up on speaking again, setting aside her mistake. "I shall not forget this service. Continue on in this manner, and I may even Name you."

A name! A visible thrill shot through the former Lady Big Ears at the very consideration of such an honor. Like many in Iracebeth's former court, Big Ears had the name she was born with, given to her by her parents, yes, but it was not a True Name. Very few were ever given such an honor, and they were all the most respected or well-known denizens of Underland. The Knave of Hearts, the Hatter Tarrant Hightopp, and the White Queen's Champion Alice Kingsley were a few that had been True Named, and it was clear Big Ears dearly wished to join their ranks in notoriety.

"Anything, your Supreme Majesty. Whatever you desire."

* * *

_"Offph!"_

Alice fell against the Knave when she dropped into the door, and they both gasped a bit in pain at the impact. Alice's gasp turned into a cough, and she quickly rolled away from Stayne as more mucus-y purple bits came out of her body. "It seems unlikely," she wheezed, "that just one mouthful of that creature's blood could turn into this much coming back out."

"Shhh!" Stayne held a hand towards her in a shushing manner, but it mattered little to Alice, who could not stop coughing. "Do you think," she forced between hacks, "I enjoy doing this?"

"Be quiet!" he said through clenched teeth, voice low. (Which was silly, as Alice herself was making quite the racket, and his normal volume of voice would have hardly made a difference.) "Do you want them set upon us?" His eye scanned the clearing they were in, landing upon a set of doors opposite themselves. "Good. I can see them. That will make this next part relatively easy, then."

Wiping at her chin again with her sleeve (why didn't she think to pack a handkerchief with her? The sleeve of this duster was getting ruined!) Alice said, sotto voice, "_Who_ would set themselves on us?"

The Knave stood and hauled Alice to her feet as well. "Do not talk, and assist me in finding the door labeled Queast, would you?"

Alice wanted to ask Stayne how she would alert him if she did find the door without speaking, but bit her tongue and trudged off the direction furthest from his person. She reached the door quickly, and was to call to Stayne that she'd found one labeled Queast, despite his request they not speak, when a loud, growling voice boomed across the clearing.

"Well, well, if it ain't the Knave of Iracebeth, come back to the Outlands. Ye were ne'er to leave, ye _slurking urpal slackush scrum_. O_pynyoun nas ye tus no wight pynchen per sangwyn dayes. Me thynketh it accordant to resoun ye nas plesaunce de quelled_."

She didn't understand a word in ten that was spoken, but Alice understood the intent behind them, and the cadence as well. Outlandish! She whirled around, ignoring the dizziness in her head, to see a ring of very sturdy looking men surrounding the Knave, interspersed here and there with an equally solid looking creature, amoung them a bear and a green pig.

Dashing forward, she pushed her way into the ring, and stood beside the Knave. "Stop!" she demanded, holding out her arms as if she could physically ward such a crowd away. "This man travels with me!"

"_Stirte yow er quelled yeself, Deere Suster!_" the Bear said, causing Alice to assume he was the leader of this group.

"I do not speak Outlandish, Bear," she replied, lowering her arms a bit. "What quarrel have you with this man?"

There was much shifting about, as each of the creatures present looked towards one of their number. A rumpled-looking Dodo stepped forward, blue-feathered head gleaming in the sun. "I am afraid, save myself, dear girl, that none here speak any language other than Outlandish with any fluency. But speak if you will, and I will translate what you say to my companions. But hurry! We wish to lynch this disreputable fellow beside you post haste. What is your name? Speak clearly, but slow." As Alice was puzzling how she was to hurry and speak slowly both, the Dodo waved a feathered arm in an impatient manner. "Come come, girl, out with it already!"

The Knave shifted uneasily behind her, but Alice was focusing on the bird, now. "I am Alice Kingsleigh," she said, and everyone around understood _that_ well enough, as there was a great uproar of doubt and disbelief that threatened to deafen her. She raised her voice to be heard over the cacophony. "I am ill! Ilosovic Stayne is directing me to Marmoreal, where I seek the White Queen's assistance."

"_The_ Alice! Hardly!" the Dodo scoffed, not even bothering to translate her words. "_The_ Alice went back Above! Imposter! Falsifier!"

"Please tell me you know where our door is…" Stayne muttered to Alice, as the mob of men and beasts became more and more agitated and creative with their name calling.

"I know where our door is," Alice confirmed.

"Really?" the Knave asked, the surprise in his voice hardly flattering.

Nodding, Alice said, "The furthest door on the left."

"Excellent. They'll stop with the taunting in a moment, and then we'll be in real trouble. Do you feel capable of running?"

Alice turned and looked up at the Knave, a bit of her own unflattering surprise showing on her face. She'd have thought that, in a situation such as this, Stayne would have abandoned her and done his level best to save himself.

"Ready on my mark," he said, and both tensed their bodies, muscles preparing for what was ahead. Alice's jaw clenched against the pounding pain in her head, and she blinked ferociously to make her vision as clear as possible.

"_Doon us honge de suyn rake-stele!_" the Bear roared, and the mob cheered his proclamation. It seemed they had come to some sort of a decision, and it wasn't a pleasant one. They turned towards the pair with murder in their eyes.

"Run," Stayne grimly ordered. The sound of steel sliding from its sheath rang in the air as the ring of bodies closed in about them. A strong fist collided with the side of Alice's face, twisting her entire body around and to the ground. She landed in a heap, stunned. More bodies fought to get close to her own, to be the one with the honor of striking the 'false' Alice, until she saw a flash of metal and several of her would be attackers fall to the ground.

"Get up and RUN!" Stayne shouted, struggling against the mob, the majority of which was now focused on him, as he had efficiently slain three of their number while they concentrated on Alice. A short sword smeared in blood was gripped tightly in one fist, while the other hand was being used in conjunction with his feet to clear attackers away from himself.

"Don't kill them!" Alice shouted, picking herself up painfully from the ground, only to be tripped again by a man with a bald head and trunk-like limbs. He grasped her by her hair, pulling upward, and Alice screamed as hanks of it came away in his grip. Blindly, she struck out, managing a very lucky strike right in the soft part of his belly that knocked the wind out of him. He released her hair, and without further prompting, she ran, stumbling towards the door.

Stayne was right behind her, half-running backwards as the remaining members of their would-be lynch mob pressed forward, not allowing him to make a clean break away.

Alice fell against the door, and with a sob, twisted the handle. It opened suddenly, slamming against the frame with a resounding bang. A sound not unlike a locomotive could be heard coming from the other side, but at that moment, Alice didn't care. She simply wanted away from their current location, away from the blood, and away from the guilt that was already riding upon her heavily. Yes, they had been attacked, but the Outlanders were confused. Did they really deserve death?

An over-large hand on her shoulder shoved her forward and into the open doorway. The hand was followed by the rest of the Knave, who slammed the door shut behind them before he leaned against it, breathing heavily.

Picking herself up off the ground again (Alice had somehow managed to forget how often she fell down while in Underland, but was unfortunately remembering now) and looked up. No less than three small tornados whirled around them. The sky was a sickly green, and everything the twisters touched became so much rubble in a matter of moments. Doors, shrubbery, and what looked like small animal parts flew by her face.

"Our next door is there!" Stayne shouted, pointing at a doorway suspended in seemingly mid-air in the very center of the clearing. One tornado broke away from its kin and made its way towards them. "I will need to drag myself through first, then pull you. Are you ready?"

"Muchness, muchness, muchness…" Alice said under her breath, her own personal mantra. She nodded.

The Knave snatched up her hand. "Don't let go!" he demanded, and then began to rush to the door, and away from the twister intent on their current direction.

Alice struggled to keep up with his long strides, but was unable to. Exhaustion caused her to stumble again, just as another tornado adjusted course and barreled towards them.

"Alice!" Stayne cried, stopping to gather her up. He'd carry her in his arms if he had to, but they needed to get to the next door!

The Knave, despite quickly turning back for her, was too late to reach Alice, and she was sucked into the center of the vortex before his horrified eyes. He could see her bounce about, once, twice, before she was ejected violently, ironically enough at the very door he'd been eager to get her to. Her body crashed through the wood, and he could hear a sickening crack, even over the rushing of the wind, as she landed on the other side.

* * *

_A/N: When I first read Outlandish on the printed page, I was struck by its similarities to Old English. So I ended up using a bastardized version of such for Outlandish in this story. The (rough) translations are as follows:_

_**"Ye were ne'er to leave, ye slurking urpal slackush scrum. Opynyoun nas ye tus no wight pynchen per sangwyn dayes. Me thynketh it accordant to resoun ye nas plesaunce de quelled."**_

_Well, the first bit, 'slurking urpal slackush scrum', is from the rough draft of the script that's been floating around, and it says it is just 'words of the most foul nature'. The rest is my version of Outlandish, translating to: "Opinion is you are a person at fault for the blood red days. I think it stands to reason you're asking to die. (by coming back here.)"_

_**"Stirte yow er quelled yeself, Deere Suster!"**_

_Move it before you're killed, sweetheart!_

_**"Doon un honge de rake-stele!"**_

_Let's hang these suckers! Well, rake-stele actually translates to just rakes, but I turned it into an insult._


	13. White Lies

_Full disclaimers in chapter one._**  
**

* * *

"Now that she is in your grasp, you allow her injury?"

Sometimes, Stayne really didn't like being an Underlandian. At least, from his very brief time in the land above, he could see that things were expected to run with a certain amount of order. London itself wouldn't cause events to occur for its own benefit. What a refreshing change from a land that many said had a mind of its own. People generally were not mad (and Stayne found mad people very annoying indeed), and he had never once had the urge to talk to the sky while there. All in all, a grand place.

Alice had never been injured there, either. Not like this.

She was unconscious when he reached her side. He ran across the field, barreling past confused tornadoes and launching himself through the shattered door. Face waxy and pale, her left arm was hanging at an odd angle, a bit of bone protruding from where it was broken uncleanly. Burgundy pulsed lazily from somewhere underneath of her, and for one long, stuttering heartbeat, the Knave thought it leaked from her head, as it was forming a pool by her neck. He let his breath out, though, when he saw that it appeared to be coming from the break, and not her head at all.

Stayne looked around this newest clearing, looking for anything he could use to make a stretcher or a flattish stick to brace her arm with. Instead all he found was a Dodo bird standing in the very middle of the clearing, acting as though for all the world that a young woman, potentially his future Queen, was not bleeding out near him. The bird kept speaking Outlandish at a vastly accelerated rate, and shaking his head back and forth. A directional sign post stood in front of him.

Five strides was all it took the Knave to reach the bird's side. "Why do you stand there? Why do you not assist her?" he hissed, his own frustrated feelings of uselessness directed at the hapless creature. The bird simply continued to read the sign post and shake his head in a negative manner. With a cry of fury, Stayne pulled his short sword out once more, and lopped the unhelpful creature's head clean of its body. The head rolled several feet away from the force of his swing, beak still forming the litany of Outlandish the Dodo had been muttering. Stayne then proceeded to hack at the bird's body, pummeling it until nothing was left save a lumpy pile of blood-soaked feathers and a few shards of bone.

A small moan from the woman behind him brought Stayne back to himself. He looked dispassionately down at the mess he had made, and reached into his inner pocket and extracted a handkerchief. Wiping down his face and neck to remove any stray bits of Dodo that might have made their way there, he paused for just one moment longer to look at the embroidery on the kerchief's edging. There were no initials, just an extremely delicate looking strawberry vine tracing the border. Occasionally a strawberry blossom or the actual fruit was stitched in, but the majority of the decoration was the vine itself. This was a little dainty he'd picked up during one of his many scouting trips to Alice's London home, and he was sorry for the necessity of putting it to such ill use.

Tucking the kerchief back away, Stayne sheathed his short sword and turned back to Alice, a new determination in his frame. "Splint the arm, wrap it against her body, and carry her through the Nowhere door to what's left of Hightopp Hill." he said to himself (despite the fact that he had no desire to encourage any of Alice's considerable curiosity to be engaged by anything relating to the Hightopps, he knew it would be the best place to camp for the evening, as hardly anyone went there anymore, and he _was_ still Banished) and then set about to do just that.

* * *

"Yes, of course, Hatta." Mirana gestured gracefully to the chair opposite hers at the table. The Hatter gratefully sat down, obviously, horribly aware that he was in a Conservatory, and would therefore be expected to be on his best behavior. "What was it you wished to speak of?"

The man fidgeted for a moment, twirling a loose thread spool between his fingers. Mirana noted it was light blue, and knew the direction in which this conversation would be going, if not at the first, then at the last.

"How was it that you were aware that I would play acceptably enough to please your sister?" his voice lisped a bit heavier than usual, exasperated by his uneasy state. "McTwisp told me after I was done that you mentioned it had to do with Alice, but then refused to tell him any more. I know that I am neither as wise nor as benevolent as your Majesty, and that is perhaps why I am failing at this, but I do not see what she could do with what happened at all."

Mirana briefly considered telling him another White Lie, but the conversation she'd just had with Chessur had left her unsettled and a bit vengeful. (And how many White Lies did it take before they turned into one Red Lie? She did not wish to risk ever telling one of _those_.) Tarrant deserved to know the truth, even if that Cat didn't believe so.

"I am afraid, my Hatta, that I may have previously told you a few White Lies."

Hatter sat very still at his Queen's words. Mirana supposed the idea that his Queen had ever lied to him, at all, even a White one, threatened to call forth the tortured man's madness. Mirana knew as a Queen she was supposed to be above such behavior, or at least maintain the illusion she was. For one of her subjects to realize she was just as anyone else was unsettling indeed.

When she did not appear to be forthcoming with any more information, the Hatter prompted Mirana, with just a trace of a brogue, "Aye?"

"I have been aware of what has been occurring. I presented to you in such a way that I was not, and for that, I do apologize. I knew you would be able to play and sing, because I knew Alice was able to. I…arranged…that you should trade a few talents with one another."

"My eyes in her face."

She gave a nod of acknowledgment. "And her musical talent at your fingers."

"To what end?" he asked. "What purpose could you possibly have, to cause each of us to steal from the other?"

"It's not a theft!" Mirana hastily assured him. "It was a trade, your gift for Alice's."

"Taking without her express permission," the Hatter growled, "sounds like theft to me. I don't want to steal from _her_. Put us to rights, _now_." It was foolishness itself to make a demand of a Queen (they being such touchy creatures, and not liking anyone ordering them about, even though they themselves could order others, which was really rather selfish, when one thought about it, but Mirana tried to avoid thinking of such thorny matters) but the Hatter didn't seem to care.

Tilting her chin upwards a tick in anger, Mirana reminded herself that Tarrant was her friend. Her fists clenched and unclenched briefly into her skirts. Her palms began to sweat as the skin around her eyes tightened. She knew, if she looked into a mirror just then, that instead of having a vaguely pink ring around them, as they usually did, they'd be darker...maybe even as deep as a fuschia tone. Anger brought the worst of the colors out in her, which was not acceptable at all. Fuschia was much too close to Red. Mirana took a deep breath.

"It is not a theft," she said, when she believed she had control once again. "You still have your eyes, do you not? You are still able to Perceive. Just as you still have that, Alice still retains the ability to sing and keep Time. Consider it rather a form of sharing, rather than theft."

The Hatter silently took this in. Mirana was amazed indeed to see him being so contemplative. Finally he said, "To what end was this done? I hate to think ill of you, my Queen (and Mirana glowed a bit at that. One of her Important People hated to think ill of her, and called her Theirs!) but I See no reason for you to interfere in _her_ life in such a manner." (Mirana's glowing subsided a bit at the tone he used, but she reminded herself he and her other Important Person had every right to be a bit vexed with her.)

"Well, Hatta…it has to do with-"

Mirana was interrupted by Chess, forming rapidly between them on the table, tail lashing furiously. "You'll say nothing, Mirana!" he hissed, and both she and the Hatter jumped away from their seats in surprise. "My duties have not yet been fulfilled. You will not like what I shall have to do if you interfere! And _you!"_ he turned to the Hatter, eyes slit in annoyance. "You will _stop asking questions_. It wasn't Curiosity that killed the Cat, hmm? It's the other way around, and you will do well to remember that!"

The Hatter's face contorted in a mutinous expression, a retort clearly on the tip of his tongue, when Chessur sighed and pouted out his lower lip. "You're not going to just let this be, are you? Very well then." The Cat blinked out of sight, a puff of smoke the only mark that he'd been there. Both of the room's occupants quickly scanned the area, but did not see Chessur. That is, until Mirana spotted him reappearing directly above the Hatter's head. She watched, open-mouthed, as the Cat snatched the top-hat off the Hatter's curls (so as to not further damage such a fantastic piece of haberdashery, no doubt) and, without further warning, dropped a heavy rock on the top of the man's head.

He crumpled, unconscious, as people are wont to do when rocks are dropped on top of their heads, and Mirana fluttered over to his side, hands checking his pulse, and lifting his eyelids. When she was satisfied that no permanent damage had been wrought, she turned her attention back to the Cat, who still floated above her, just now with the Hat upon his own head.

"What is the meaning of this?" she fairly seethed, and the Cat shrugged.

"He can't ask inconvenient questions if he's not awake to do so, hmm? Drag him off to a bed, and we can just pretend this entire episode was a bout of his madness, yes?"

"No, Chess, that we cannot." Mirana was resolute. The Cat had gone too far.

"Ah, I see." The Cheshire Cat was silent for several moments, and then said, resignedly, "It seems we are at an impasse then, my dear."

* * *

"_Time __can_ _be funny in dreams. But you know what's funnier?"_

_Alice hardly had time to think of an answer, when Chessur removed his head and stood on it with his front paws. _

"_You, thinking that there's any proper path at all." He then proceeded to walk on his own head, it turning under his paws like a wheel, his tail sticking nearly straight up in the air. _

_"You're walking a path, to be certain. Yet your steps are slower than they should be due to your constant fretting about whichever fork you take being the correct one." Abruptly he stopped walking, jumped up and flipped in mid-air, and landed so that his hind legs were now the ones on top of his head. He contorted so that his back claws lifted the orb and placed it back upon his shoulders. However, his body was backways, and his head front ways, so he had to twist in order to have his belly be centered under his chin again._

"_That's the big secret, you know, dearie," he drawled, fixing Alice with a stare that she'd never seen on __his face before. With a small start, she realized it was serious compassion. "It matters not which way you go, if you've no idea where you're headed to. But have you never stopped to wonder-" and then that grin that she was so familiar with, the one that made the little hairs on her arms stand on end, stretched from ear to ear- "why the path I lead you on always seems to end with the Hatter?"_

"Hatter."

Alice said his name, at first shocked that she had control over her own body, as it had seemed like one of those dreams where she couldn't do a thing, but that changed to muted acceptance when she saw the reason she was able to do so was that she was no longer in that dream, but instead Somewhere Else.

But the Hatter was not to be found.

Never having been in that place before without the Hatter there before her, Alice had never noticed how unpleasant the environs really were. Yes, she'd noticed the fog, and the seemingly lack of a solid surface for her feet and bottom to rest upon (as it was rather difficult to _not_ notice that!) but with his presence, she'd not noted how entirely blank it seemed. Her eyes fairly ached for color, for a break from the blackness and swirling, grey-purple mist.

Seeing no real alternative, Alice carefully sat down upon the not-there ground, determined she would wait for him. Hopefully it would not be too long, surely?

It wasn't. Within a few moments, the Hatter himself stood near her, and Alice scrabbled back to her feet to greet him.

"Alice!" he nearly shouted, rushing to her side. "What has happened to you?" He hugged her fiercely to himself, and Alice caught a whiff of his pleasant scent, that tea and ink smell, before he released her suddenly. "Oh, but I shouldn't be holding you as such! I may very well exasperate that which ails you! Forgive me, Alice?"

"There's nothing to forgive, Hatter." she said, confusion clear.

"You aren't aware?" he asked. When her brow simply furrowed deeper, he gently touched her left arm. "This appears to be broken." Tears glimmered in the corners of his eyes as his other hand reached for her face. A finger traced across her bottom lip, very carefully. "Split," he said, voice thick with a almost indefinable emotion. That same hand gently traced upwards, towards her brow. "Torn. And bruised."

Every injury that the Hatter brought to Alice's attention suddenly throbbed, and a small gasp of pain escaped her. Dizzy, she flailed for a moment, and the Hatter caught her under her unbroken arm, and gently lowered her to the invisible ground.

"Alice, what…"

"I am in the Outlands." she said, and this time it was the Hatter's turn to be confused.

"No, Alice, you are Somewhere Else, with me." Had her head suffered more injury than it seemed?

"I don't mean right now. I guess I mean…my body? Or before I came here…" she trailed off, unsure of how what they were experiencing actually worked. She looked up into the Hatter's eyes, hoping he would understand what she spoke of without her having to struggle for an explanation.

It seemed he did, for his eyes spiraled into yellow-orange, and his brogue thickened. "They did this? Those that live in the Outlands?" He gestured to her injuries, and Alice shook her head, a quick denial on her lips.

"No!…no," she soothed. "Isn't it strange, that I did not even feel this, until you reminded me of it?" A wry smile twisted her lips, until she saw a look of horror and self-loathing cross the Hatter's face. "Oh, that's not what I-" she cut herself off, deciding that perhaps just distracting him would be better. "A tornado picked me up and tossed me through a door."

She scooted over to him from where she sat on the ground and hugged him, careful of her left arm. "I am glad I am here with you now." She waited for his body to release the tension that held it taut before she went to let go, but he tightened his grip on her, not allowing her to move away. "When you did not come to me last night, as you said you would, I feared for you. I tried not to, I didn't even tell the White Queen, but I was so frightened. Please, may I just…" he paused, and Alice was so close to him she could hear his nervous gulp, "may we just sit in this attitude, for a little while?"

"Yes. That would be…nice."

They sat that way for a little while, neither saying a word. Eventually the Hatter let her go, and Alice believed he was done holding her; she felt decidedly ambivalent about that, until he gently and wordlessly directed her body so that she back leaned against his chest, nestled between his legs. He stretched them out, and Alice couldn't help but smile as she saw his too-short pants, mismatched socks, and his battered, oft-patched shoes. He then wrapped his arms around her once again, and Alice could not recall ever feeling safer or more cared for. (At least, not since her dear father had died; but it didn't feel like the same quality of safeness. Hatter in no way made her feel like a little girl. This was familiar and yet brand new at the same time.)

"I do not wish to alarm you…" he said, (and how wonderful was it to feel the rumble of his words come up through his chest as he spoke?) "but there are things you need to know. Beginning with: the Red Queen is residing in Marmoreal."

Alice nearly launched herself from his arms at such an improbable statement delivered so calmly, to denounce what he said as the strangest of lies. But this man was her Hatter (and when had she started to think of him as hers? That must be set aside to study on later, she decided) and he would not lie to her. If he said Iracebeth of Crims was in Marmoreal, it must be so.

Instead what she did was press herself closer still to him, and said, in as calm of a voice as she could muster, "She plans to kill the White Queen. I Saw it." A sharp intake of breath told her that the Hatter had heard her, but he remained silent, allowing her to continue. She pulled away from him then, finally, and sat across, ready to have a serious discussion. They had spoken of her dreams before, but never explicitly. "Please tell me everything that you know, and I will do the same."

So began a long discussion. The topics ranged in concerns from the two Queens (and Mirana's strange behavior with the Paper he had found), to Stayne (of which the Hatter very voraciously protested against her traveling with; her response was that it was too late for him to fuss himself about it now, as she was currently unconscious in his presence. She'd tilted her head up to say such to him, had seen his eyes begin to swirl with their violent tones, and tapped his knee with her right hand, gently, and said, "I can handle the Knave." He'd settled, but still had a mulish tenseness to his frame for several minutes after.), her injuries (and how specifically she'd obtained them-which nearly set off another bout of the badness, but he was able to contain it, barely), his strange conversation with Mirana before being knocked unconscious ("Which I would be more concerned for our Queen's safety, were it not Chess who made me so." he said, and Alice had said, faintly, "The Cheshire Cat?" before dropping the subject, her own mind spinning furiously at the obvious connection between her last dream featuring the Cat and what Mirana had been saying Tarrant before he was assaulted by said Cat.) to finally, where they themselves were: Somewhere Else.

"I have been selfish," he began. "But I can not in good conscious allow this to continue. Alice, this must be your last journey to Somewhere Else."

A protest automatically sprang to her lips, for while the trips to this purple fogged realm were disorienting and a bit frightening, they were also, in their own way, pleasant...mostly because of the one holding her. She turned to him, and he shushed her with a finger to her lips. "Please allow me to tell you now, before I decide I would rather be _slurvish _than noble. The White Queen has told me that, if you are to continue on in the manner you are, you will…perish."

"It will kill me?" she said, a bit horrified.

His voice caught, but he answered her anyways. "Yes. I know not how many journeys it would take, but I would rather continue with the not knowing, if the only way to gain that knowledge is through your experiencing it firsthand."

"B-but Hatter…" Alice's voice stuttered, "I'm n-not controlling this! I don't know why t-this is happening at all!" She took a great gasp of air, and said, fighting the panic (which felt amazingly like the panic she'd felt at Hamish's proposal-and her mother thought she was being histrionic when she'd said she imagined marrying him would be like dying!) that rose, "How can I stop doing something when I don't know how it's being done to begin with?"

"I don't know, Alice," Hatter replied, tears shimmering in his eyes. "But please, try. Promise me you'll try!"

"I'll try," she swore, as a few tears slowly rolled down her own face. "And I will see you soon, yes?"

"Yes," he said, and it sounded to both of them as if he were trying to be convincing, rather than actually convinced it to be so. "Very soon."

"Before you know it," she pressed, and he shook his head.

"Nay, 'tis one thing that is truly impossible. Every small moment in which you are gone, I know it."

How was Alice to reply to such a declaration? She blushed, and demurely looked down at her lap, afraid to meet his gaze then. He said, delicately, "You're not in an awful hurry to galumph away presently, are you?" Gentle fingers traced over her face, and she gave a small, shuddering sigh.

"I should be," she murmured, "but no, I am not."

She felt rather than saw him lean towards her, half hesitating in the motion. A tilt of her head upwards was the only motivation he needed to continue it, though, and he closed the distance between them. It was a careful, deliberate kiss, unlike the two they'd previously shared. (Which had been much too hurried and not thought out as much as they should have been, despite how much they _had_ been thought on.)

A lick to her lower lip caused Alice to open her mouth with a small gasp, and he deepened the kiss, humming contently in the back of his throat as he did so. Alice began giggling, right there in the midst of the kiss, as she recognized the song as the one sung at the Caucus race, meant to speed along the drying of the runners. Tarrant pulled away, more than prepared to be insulted and hurt at her _laughing_ at the way he kissed her, until he saw the wide smile on her face. "Why that song, Hatter?" she asked.

An answering smile leapt to his own features. "Why _not_ that song, dear Alice? Is there another that you would be more to your liking?"

Tapping her chin, she seemed to consider his request. "No, I suppose not. It's a perfectly lovely song, as songs go. Not Scarborough Fair," she teased, and the Hatter obligingly flushed, "But a lovely song nonetheless. Do you know, my sister Margaret always loved when I played that song. She'd ask to play it for her, over and over and over again." Then she began to sing, selecting the second verse as her starting point.

_Tell him to find an acre of land_

_Parsley sage rosemary and thyme_

_Between the salt water and the sea strand_

_Then he'll be a true love of mine_

It was then, as Alice sang those words, that Tarrant knew, completely, unequivocally, and totally, what he had been refusing to acknowledge to himself. He was absolutely in love with Alice.

She stopped after that one stanza. The Hatter's throat was dry, but somehow he still managed to find his voice. "We seem to be in such an acre now." He smiled, but silently begged her to understand. He wanted her to hear what he was saying, when he didn't say anything at all_. I'm not brave enough to form the words_, he acknowledged to her, still silently. _I'm not like you_. Perhaps she could say it for the both of them.

"So it is." Alice grinned back, but said no more. His stomach plummeted in disappointment (and just whose idea was it to raise Hope to begin with? One knew that Hope and Disappointment were childhood friends, and if you dealt with one, you had to be prepared for the other.)

Still, he reached for the hand on her unbroken arm, and threaded it with his own. He held her hand and spoke nonsense for quite some time; riddles and snatches of poetry, odd little Underlandian sayings that he thought would make her smile.

"I need to wake soon," she finally said, and the Hatter knew it was true, but still found himself begging. "No, don't go, not just yet."

But her feet were already beginning to fade away into the mist. "I think Stayne is getting impatient with me," she mused. "I'm beginning to feel him jostle me about."

The Hatter had many things he would have liked to have said about such behavior, but Alice had timed her statement well; she was nearly gone when the last word left her lips, and completely just after that.

And sitting on the ground, barely visible in the mist of what had-been Alice, sat a letter.

* * *

A stinging slap across the face roused Alice to sudden, blinding pain. Her first coherent thought was one of dismay, as her injuries had not felt quite so flamingly miserable while she was Somewhere Else. She went to sit up, but the barest movement of her arm sent agony through her. Stars floated across her vision as she considered slipping back into unconsciousness, but another sharp slap to the face disabused her of that.

Blinking fiercely, Alice came to see she was propped against a small scrub tree, with Stayne kneeling on the ground directly opposite her. He was very white, his scars standing out a livid purple against his skin, his thin lips pressed into an even thinner line.

"Wherever did you get that sword?" tumbled out of Alice's mouth. Out of all the questions she had for the man, she was amused with herself _that_ particular one was the first asked.

He rolled his eye, relief and disgust mingling equally in the gesture. "I know that you shall be fine," he grumbled, "if you're asking questions." He filled her in briefly on her injuries, and informed her of their current location.

"So we are in the Hightopp Village?" she asked, a queer feeling under her breastbone. Absently she fingered the pin around her neck. Dearly, she wished to get up and explore.

"What is left of it," Stayne confirmed. "There are still some of the houses left half-standing, such as the one we are currently just outside. I am preparing our camp for the night there." He gestured behind him, and Alice could see a rough outline of what must have at one time been a pleasant little house. Now it was just one whole wall, very burnt and crumbling, and one half wall attached to that. Scattered bits of domesticity could be seen as well; a broken clock here, smashed china there. All in all, it was an extremely depressing sight.

"I'm going to clear out the rubbish from the house, and build a fire in what's left of that fireplace," he said, nodding to the pile of bricks leaning against the house's one full wall. Alice hadn't been aware it _was_ a fireplace until he said it was.

She was going to ask why he had awoken her, then, if he was just going to leave her leaning against a tree while he did manual labor, but he answered her question before she could form the words. "It seemed…unwise…to leave you as you were for any longer of a period of time. Sometimes, with head injuries, when the victim is left to sleep, they do not wake again."

A sharp retort wanted to come from her, on how if he was concerned about her head injury, then perhaps he shouldn't have slapped her, when she realized his actions were caused by just that. He was _concerned _about her. It was such a strange idea that she held her tongue and just nodded her understanding at him. He grunted once and then turned towards the house, to begin the process of making it livable, at least for that night.

Later, they sat around the small fire Stayne had built, Alice with both of their blankets around her shoulders, Stayne in just his coat. Alice wondered how it was possible he was back in the leather, complete with his armaments, but thought that perhaps now would not be the best time to ask. A small bowl of soup sat before her, but Alice only picked at it, frankly concerned about the source of its ingredients.

The Knave watched Alice push her food around, and felt a wave of exhaustion pull at him. She simply looked so young sitting there, not eating, her blonde hair pulled loosely away from her face and illness lingering in the shadows under her eyes. This was the woman he was placing so much faith in, to be able to rule Underland as a Queen? At that moment, it seemed nearly inconceivable. But she looked up at him then, and smiled faintly, and he felt something squeeze painfully in his chest, not unlike when he was very young and first entering into Iracebeth's service. He'd been in awe of her, with her ability to command all those around her, her stately manner of holding herself, her lusciously large mouth…

"It is times like this I dearly miss Rodrigo."

He hadn't realized he spoke aloud until Alice's voice said, questioningly, "Rodrigo?"

Green eyes ablaze with curiosity regarded him.

"My horse," he said, a bit dryly. "He is a friend as well as a beast of burden. Usually, he gives me his honest opinion on matters, whither he believes I would like to hear it or not."

"I can not pretend to know what it is that you wish to speak of…" Alice started slowly, as if carefully choosing her words, "However, we have each saved the other from unfortunate situations here in the Outlands. Does that not make us friends of a sort as well?" The last was said tentatively, as if she were almost afraid of his answer.

Stayne had honestly never thought of Alice as someone he could talk to. She was pleasant to look at, and a tool to be used. Now that the idea of actually conversing with her beyond necessity was presented to him, now that she had named him a friend, it took swift root. A strange wiggle curled through his stomach. A woman, a Queen with whom one conversed, who considered you a friend? The suggestion seemed very odd to him, but in a most agreeable way. None of this, however, could he tell her; nor could he confide in her the way she seemed to wish him to, as most of his ruminations were on what to do with her, and his plans for her.

"Won't be the same." he finally said.

"Why not?" she asked, offense clear in her voice.

"Well, I suppose…if you really are sincere..." he said, as if thinking it over carefully. Then he said, in the same pondering manner, "Will you let me ride you wherever I wish to go?" He smirked evilly at her, certain this would forestall any of her off-putting 'friends' talk.

He was disappointed, however, as she didn't fly into a righteous rage at his insinuation. "You hide yourself behind lechery very well," Alice said, after regarding him for a quiet moment. "I think there's more to you, however. When you are ready for that Perception to be lifted, I'll See it." She set down the bowl and lay down then, her back to him. "Good night."

When had he ever been told there was more to his person than theft, lechery, or death? Never, that's when. Until Alice had just said differently to him, he'd never have said any one would ever say such a thing, even when pressed. It was just another impossibility being destroyed under the weight of her will for Alice, but for Stayne, it was nearly life-altering.

Just another reason he wished for a friend to confide in. The only one available to him at the moment, however, was the very one to cause his confusion, and could therefore hardly assist him in clearing the muddle his mind had become. His eye flicked over to her, and he briefly considered going to her, and accepting her offer of talking (of all things!), but he saw her easy, measured breathing, and knew she was already asleep. And she dearly needed her sleep. He'd not wake her, then.


End file.
